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FOLLOWING  THE  SUN-FLAG 


FOLLOWING 
THE    SUN-FLAG 

A  VAIN   PURSUIT 
THROUGH   MANCHURIA 


BY 


JOHN    FOX,    Jr. 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1905 

V 

C  .  - 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  April,  1905 


TROW  OIHECTOUT 

PRINTINa  AND  SOOKBINDINO  COMPANY 

NEW    YORK 


^0 
"THE   MEN   OF   MANY  WARS"      . 

WITH    CONGRATULATIONS   TO 

THOSE   ON   WHOM   FELL 

THROUGH    CHANCE   OR    PERSONAL   EFFORT 

A  BETTER  FORTUNE  THAN  WAS  MINE 


CONTENTS 


I.  The  Trail  of  the  Saxon     . 

II.  Hardships  of  the  Campaign 

III.  Lingering  in  Tokio 

IV.  Making  for  Manchuria  .     . 
V.  On  the  War-Dragon's  Trail 

VI.  The  White  Slaves  of  Haicheng 


PAGE 

I 

i8 

50 

74 
102 
128 


VII.    The  Backward  Trail  of  the  Saxon   160 


INTRODUCTION 

After  a  long  still-hunt  in  Tokio,  and  a 
long  pursuit  through  Manchuria,  following 
that  Sun-Flag  of  Japan,  I  gave  up  the  chase 
at  Liaoyang. 

Not  being  a  military  expert,  my  purpose  was 
simply  to  see  under  that  flag  the  brown  little 
"  gun-man  " — as  he  calls  himself  in  his  own 
tongue — in  camp  and  on  the  march,  in  trench 
and  in  open  field,  in  assault  and  in  retreat; 
to  tell  tales  of  his  heroism,  chivalry,  devo- 
tion, sacrifice,  incomparable  patriotism;  to  see 
him  fighting,  wounded — and,  since  such  things 
in  war  must  be — dying,  dead.  After  seven 
months  my  spoils  of  war  were  post-mortem 
battle-fields,  wounded  convalescents  in  hos- 
pitals, deserted  trenches,  a  few  graves,  and  one 
Russian  prisoner  in  a  red  shirt. 

Upon  that  unimportant  personal  disaster  I 


X  INTRODUCTION 

can  look  back  now  with  no  little  amusement; 
and  were  I  to  re- write  these  articles,  I  should 
doubtless  temper  both  word  and  spirit  here 
and  there;  but  as  my  feeling  at  the  time  was 
sincere,  natural,  and  justified,  as  there  is,  I 
believe,  no  over-statement  of  the  facts  that 
caused  it,  and  as  the  articles  were  written  with- 
out malice  or  the  least  desire  to  "  get  even  " — 
I  let  them  go,  as  written,  into  book  form  now. 

No  more  enthusiastic  pro-Japanese  than  I 
ever  touched  foot  on  the  shores  of  the  little 
island,  and  r  Japanese,  however  much  he 
might,  if  only  for  that  reason,  value  my  good 
opinion,  can  regret  more  than  I  any  change 
that  took  place  within  me  when  I  came  face  to 
face  with  a  land  and  a  people  I  had  longed 
since  childhood  to  see, 

I  am  very  sorry  to  have  sounded  the  per- 
sonal note  so  relentlessly  in  this  little  book. 
That,  too,  was  unavoidable,  and  will,  I  hope, 
be  pardoned. 

John  Fox,  Jr. 
Big  Stone  Gap,  Virginia. 


FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 


FOLLOWING  THE  SUN-FLAG 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE  SAXON 

An  amphitheatre  of  feathery  clouds  ran  half 
around  the  horizon  and  close  to  the  water's 
edge;  midway  and  toward  Russia  rose  a  great 
dark  shadow  through  which  the  sun  shone 
faintly.  Such  was  the  celestial  setting  for  the 
entrance  of  a  certain  ship  some  ten  days  since 
at  sunset  into  the  harbor  of  Yokohama  and  the 
Land  of  the  Rising  Sun;  but  no  man  was  to 
guess  from  the  strange  pictures,  strange  people, 
and  jumbled  mass  of  new  ideas  and  impres- 
sions waiting  to  make  his  brain  dizzy  on  shore, 
that  the  big  cloud  aloft  was  the  symbol  of  act- 
ual war.  No  sign  was  to  come,  by  night  or  by 
day,  from  the  tiled  roofs,  latticed  windows, 
paper  houses,  the  foreign  architectural  mon- 
strosities of  wood  and  stone;  the  lights,  Ian- 


2  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

terns,  shops — tiny  and  brilliantly  lit;  the  innu- 
merable rickshas,  the  swift  play  under  them 
of  muscular  bare  brown  legs  which  bore  thin- 
chested  men  who  run  open-mouthed  and  smoke 
cigarettes  while  waiting  a  fare;  the  musical 
chorus  of  getas  clicking  on  stone,  mounted  by 
men  bareheaded  or  in  billycock  hats;  little 
women  in  kimonos;  ponies  with  big  bellies, 
apex  rumps,  bushy  forelocks  and  mean  eyes; 
rows  of  painted  dolls  caged  behind  barred  win- 
dows and  under  the  glare  of  electric  lights — 
expectant,  waiting,  patient — hour  by  hour, 
night  after  night,  no  suggestion  save  perhaps 
in  their  idle  patience;  coolies  with  push  carts, 
staggering  under  heavy  loads,  "cargadores  "  in 
straw  hats  and  rain  coats  of  rushes,  looking  for 
all  the  world  like  walking  little  haycocks — no 
sign  except  in  flags,  the  red  sunbursts  of  Japan, 
along  now  and  then  with  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
— flags  which,  for  all  else  one  could  know, 
might  have  been  hung  out  for  a  holiday. 

For  more  than  a  month  I  had  been  on  the 
trail  of  the  Saxon,  the  westward  trail  on  which 
he  set  his  feet  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago, 


THE    TRAIL   OF    THE    SAXON  3 

when  he  cut  the  apron-strings  of  Mother  Eng- 
land, turned  his  back  on  her,  and,  without 
knowing  it,  started  back  toward  her  the  other 
way  round  the  world,  to  clasp  hands,  perhaps, 
again  across  the  Far  East.  Where  he  started, 
I  started,  too,  from  the  top  of  the  Cumberland 
over  which  he  first  saw  the  Star  of  Empire 
beckoning  westward  only.  I  went  through  a 
black  tunnel  straight  under  the  trail  his  moc- 
casined  feet  wore  over  Cumberland  Gap,  and 
stopped,  for  a  moment,  in  a  sleeper  on  the  spot 
where  he  pitched  his  sunset  camp  for  the  night; 
and  the  blood  of  his  footprints  still  was  there. 

"  This  is  a  hell  of  a  town,"  said  the  con- 
ductor cheerfully. 

I  waited  for  an  explanation.     It  came. 

"  Why,  I  went  to  a  nigger-minstrel  show 
here  the  other  night.  A  mountaineer  in  the 
gallery  shot  a  nigger  and  a  white  man  dead 
in  the  aisle,  but  the  band  struck  up  '  Dixie,' 
and  the  show  never  stopped.  But  one  man  left 
the  house  and  that  was  Bones.  They  found 
him  at  the  hotel,  but  he  refused  to  go  back. 
*  I  can't  be  funny  in  that  place,'  he  said." 


4  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

Now  the  curious  thing  is  that  each  one  of 
those  three,  the  slayer  and  the  slain — the 
Saxon  through  the  arrogance  of  race,  the  Afri- 
can through  the  imitative  faculty  that  has 
given  him  something  of  that  same  arrogance 
toward  the  people  of  other  lands — felt  him- 
self the  superior  of  any  Oriental  with  a  yellow 
skin.  And  now  when  I  think  of  the  exquisite 
courtesy  and  ceremony  and  gentle  politeness 
in  this  land,  I  smile;  then  I  think  of  the  bear- 
ing of  the  man  toward  the  Woman  of  this  land, 
and  the  bearing  of  the  man — even  the  moun- 
taineer— toward  the  woman  in  our  own  land, 
and  the  place  the  woman  holds  in  each — and 
the  smile  passes. 

Along  that  old  wilderness  trail  I  went  across 
the  Ohio,  through  prairie  lands,  across  the  rich 
fields  of  Iowa,  the  plains  of  Nebraska,  over 
the  Rockies,  and  down  into  the  great  deserts 
that  stretch  to  the  Sierras.  Along  went  others 
who  were  concerned  in  that  trail :  three  Japan- 
ese students  hurrying  home  from  England, 
France,  and  Germany,  bits  of  that  network  of 
eager  investigation  that  Japan  has  spread  over 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    SAXON  5 

the  globe — quiet,  unobtrusive  little  fellows 
who  rushed  for  papers  at  every  station  to  see 
news  of  the  war;  three  Americans  on  the  way 
to  the  Philippines  for  the  Government;  an 
English  Major  of  Infantry  and  an  English 
Captain  of  Cavalry  and  a  pretty  English  girl; 
and  two  who  in  that  trail  had  no  interest — two 
newspaper  men  from  France.  I  have  been  told 
that  the  only  two  seven-masted  vessels  in  the 
world  collided  one  night  in  mid-ocean.  Well, 
these  sons  of  France — the  only  ones  on  their 
mission,  perhaps,  in  broad  America — collided 
not  only  on  the  same  train,  the  same  sleeper,  and 
the  same  section,  I  was  told,  but  both  were  ga- 
zetted for  the  same  lower  berth.  Each  asserted 
his  claim  with  a  politeness  that  became  gesticu- 
latory  and  vociferous.  Conductor,  brakeman, 
and  porter  came  to  the  scene  of  action.  No- 
body could  settle  the  dispute,  so  the  correspond- 
ents exchanged  cards,  claimed  Gallic  satisfac- 
tion mutually,  and  requested  the  conductor  to 
stop  the  train  and  let  them  get  off  and  fight. 
The  conductor  explained  that,  much  as  he  per- 
sonally would  like  to  see  the  scrap,  the  law  of 


6  FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

the  land  and  the  speed  of  the  Overland  Lim- 
ited made  tarrying  impossible.  Without  ra- 
piers I  have  often  wondered  how  those  two 
gentlemen  of  France  would  have  drawn  each 
other's  blood.  Each  still  refused  to  take  the 
upper  berth,  but  next  day  they  were  friends, 
and  came  over  sea  practically  arm  and  arm  on 
shipboard,  and  arm  and  arm  they  practically 
are  in  Japan  to-day. 

Through  the  stamping  grounds  of  Wister's 
"  Virginian  "  and  other  men  of  fact  and  fic- 
tion in  the  West,  the  trail  led — through  barren 
wastes  with  nothing  alive  in  sight  except  an 
occasional  flock  of  gray,  starved  sheep  with  a 
lonely  herder  and  his  sheep-dog  watching  us 
pass,  while  a  blue-eyed  frontiersman  gave  me 
more  reasons  for  race  arrogance  with  his  tales 
of  Western  ethics  in  the  old  days:  How  men 
trusted  each  other  and  were  not  deceived  in 
friendship  and  in  trade;  how  they  sacrificed 
themselves  for  each  other  without  regret,  and 
no  wish  for  reward,  and  honored  and  protected 
women  always. 

Then   forty  miles  of  snowsheds   over   the 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    SAXON  7 

Sierras,  and  the  trail  dropped  sheer  into  the 
dewy  green  of  flowers,  gardens,  and  fruit-tree 
blossoms,  where  the  grass  was  lush,  cattle  and 
sheep  were  fat,  and  the  fields  looked  like  rich 
orchards — to  end  in  the  last  camp  of  the  Sax- 
on, San  Francisco — where  the  heathen  Chinee 
walks  the  streets,  where  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son's bronze  galley  has  motionless  sails  set  to 
the  winds  that  blow  through  a  little  park, 
where  Bret  Harte's  memory  is  soon  to  be  hon- 
ored in  a  similar  way,  and  where  a  man  claimed 
that  the  civilization  of  the  trail  had  leaped  in 
one  bound  from  Chicago  to  the  Pacific  Coast. 
And  I  wondered  what  the  intermediate  Saxons, 
over  whose  heads  that  leap  wa^  made,  would 
have  to  say  in  answer. 

He  had  sailed  one  wide  ocean-^this  Saxon 
— the  other  and  wider  one  was  by  comparison 
a  child's  play  on  a  mill-pond  with  a  boat  of  his 
own  making,  and  over  it  I  followed  him  on. 

On  the  dock  two  days  later  I  saw  my  first 
crowd  of  Japanese,  in  Saxon  clothes,  waving 
flags,  and  giving  Saxon  yells  to  their  country- 
men who  were  going  home  to  fight.    After  that, 


8  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

but  for  an  occasional  march  of  those  same  coun-* 
trymen  on  the  steerage  deck  to  the  measure  of 
a  war-song,  no  more  tidings,  or  rumors  or  sug- 
gestions of  war. 

Seven  days  later,  long,  slowly  rising  slopes 
of  moimtains  veiled  in  mist  came  in  view,  and 
we  saw  waves  of  many  colors  washing  the  feet 
of  newest  America,  where  the  Saxon  has 
pitched  his  latest  but  not  his  most  Eastern — 
as  I  must  say  now — camp;  and  where  he  is 
patching  a  human  crazy  quilt  of  skins  from 
China,  Japan,  Portugal,  America,  England, 
Africa.  The  patching  of  it  goes  swiftly,  but 
there  will  be  one  hole  in  the  quilt  that  will 
never  be  filled  again  on  this  earth,  for  the  Ha- 
waiian is  going — as  he  himself  says,  he  is 
"  pau,"  which  in  English  means  finished,  done 
for,  doomed.  Now  girls  who  are  three-quar- 
ters Saxon  dance  the  hula-hula  for  tourists,  and 
but  for  a  movement  of  their  feet,  it  is  the 
dance  of  the  East  wretchedly  and  vulgarly 
done,  and  the  spectator  would  wipe  away,  if 
he  could,  every  memory  but  the  wailing  song 
of  the  woman  with  the  guitar — a  song  which 
to  my  ear  had  no  more  connection  with  the 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE   SAXON  9 

dance  than  a  cradle  song  could  have  with  a 
bacchanalian  orgy. 

At  a  big  white  hotel  that  night  hundreds  of 
people  sat  in  a  brilliantly  lighted  open-air  gar- 
den with  a  stone  floor  and  stone  balustrade,  and 
heard  an  Hawaiian  band  of  many  nation- 
alities play  the  tunes  of  all  nations,  and  two 
women  give  vent  to  that  adaptation  of  the 
Methodist  hymn  that  passes  for  an  Hawaiian 
song. 

Every  possible  human  mixture  of  blood  I 
had  seen  that  day,  I  fancied,  but  of  the  morals 
that  caused  the  mixture  I  will  not  speak,  for 
the  looseness  of  them  is  climatic  and  easily  ex- 
plained. I  am  told  that  after  five  or  six  years 
the  molecules  even  in  the  granite  of  the  New 
England  character  begin  to  get  restless.  Still 
there  seems  to  be  hope  on  the  horizon. 

At  midnight  a  bibulous  gentleman  descend- 
ed from  a  hack  in  front  of  the  hotel. 

"  Roderick  Random,"  he  said  to  his  Portu- 
guese driver,  "  this  is  a  bum-m  town,"  spelling 
the  word  out  thickly.  Roderick  smiled  with 
polite  acquiescence.  The  bibulous  gentleman 
spoke  likewise  to  the  watchman  at  the  door. 


10  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

"  Quite  right,  sir,"  said  the  watchman. 

The  elevator  got  the  same  blighting  criti- 
cism from  the  visitor,  whose  good-night  to  the 
clerk  at  the  desk  still  was: 

"  This  is  a  bum-m  town." 

The  clerk,  too,  agreed,  and  the  man  turned 
away  in  disgust. 

"I  can't  get  an  argument  out  of  anybody  on 
that  point,"  he  said — all  of  which  would  seem 
to  cast  some  doubt  on  the  public  late-at-night 
flaunting  of  vice  in  Honolulu. 

Two  pictures  only  I  carried  away  of  the 
many  I  hoped  to  see — the  Hawaiian  swimmers, 
bronzed  and  perfect  as  statues,  who  floated  out 
to  meet  us  and  dive  for  coins,  and  a  crowd  of 
little  yellow  fellows,  each  on  the  swaying 
branch  of  the  monkey-pod  tree,  black  hair 
shaking  in  the  wind,  white  teeth  flashing,  faces 
merry,  and  mouths  stretched  wide  with  song. 

Thence  eleven  long,  long  days  to  that  sunset 
entrance  into  the  Land  of  the  Rising  Sun — 
where  Perry  came  to  throw  open  to  the  world 
the  long-shut  sea  portals  of  Japan. 

The  Japanese  way  of  revealing  heart-beats 
is  not  the  way  of  the  Occidental  world,  and 


THE    TRAIL   OF    THE    SAXON         11 

seeing  no  signs  of  war,  this  correspondent,  at 
least,  straightway  forgot  the  mission  on  which 
he  had  come,  and  straightway  was  turned  into 
an  eager  student  of  a  people  and  a  land  which 
since  childhood  he  had  yearned  to  see. 

On  a  certain  bluff  sits  a  certain  tea-house — 
you  can  see  it  from  the  deck  of  the  ship.  It  is 
the  tea-house  of  One  Hundred  and  One  Steps, 
and  the  mistress  of  it  is  O-kin-san,  daughter  of 
the  man  who  was  mayor  when  Perry  opened 
the  sea  portals  at  the  mouth  of  the  cannon, 
whose  guest  Perry  was,  and  whose  friend. 

O-kin-san' s  people  lost  their  money  once, 
and  she  opened  the  tea-house,  as  the  American 
girl  under  similar  circumstances  would  have 
taken  to  the  typewriter  and  the  stenographer's 
pen.  The  house  has  a  year  of  life  for  almost 
every  one  of  the  steps  that  mount  to  it,  which  is 
ancient  life  for  Japan,  where  fires  make  an  in- 
fant life  of  three  years  for  the  average  Jap- 
anese home.  The  tea-girls  are  O-kin-san's  own 
kin.  Everything  under  her  roof  is  blameless, 
and  the  women  of  any  home  in  any  land  can 
be  taken  there  fearlessly. 

An  American  enthusiast — a  voluntary  exile. 


12         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

whom  I  met  later — told  me  that  O-kin-san's 
Japanese  was  as  good  as  could  be  found  in  the 
empire;  that  her  husband  was  one  of  the  best- 
educated  men  he  had  ever  known,  and  had  been 
a  great  help  and  inspiration  to  Lafcadio  Hearn. 
There  were  all  the  pretty  courtesies,  the  pretty- 
ceremonies,  and  the  gentle  kindness  of  which 
the  world  has  read. 

After  tea  and  sake  and  little  Japanese  cakes 
and  peanuts,  thence  straightway  to  Tokio, 
whence  the  soldiers  went  to  the  front  and  the 
unknown  correspondent  was  going,  at  that 
time,  to  an  unknown  destination  in  an  un- 
known time.  It  is  an  hour  between  little 
patches  of  half-drowned  rice  bulbs,  cottages 
thatched  with  rice  straw,  with  green  things 
growing  on  the  roof,  and  little  gardens  laid 
out  with  an  art  minute  and  exquisite,  blossom- 
ing trees  of  wild  cherry,  that  beloved  symbol 
of  Japanese  bravery  because  it  dares  to  spread 
its  petals  under  falling  snow,  dashed  here  and 
there  with  the  red  camellia  that  is  unlucky  be- 
cause it  drops  its  blossom  whole  and  suggests 
the  time  when  the  Japanese  head  might  fall 


THE  TRAIL  OF  THE  SAXON    13 

for  a  slight  offence;  between  little  hills  over? 
spread  with  pine  trees,  and  little  leafless  sap- 
lings that  help  so  much  to  give  the  delicate, 
airy  quality  that  characterizes  the  landscape  of 
Japan.  At  every  station  was  a  hurrying  throng 
of  men,  women,  and  children  who  clicked  the 
stone  pavements  on  xylophones  with  a  music 
that  some  writer  with  the  tympanum  of  a 
blacksmith  characterized  as  a  clatter.  These 
getas  are  often  selected,  I  am  told,  to  suit  the 
individual  ear. 

At  Tokio  outward  evidences  of  war  were  as 
meagre  as  ever.  But  to  that  lack,  the  answer 
is,  "  It  is  not  the  Japanese  custom."  I  am  told 
that  the  night  war  was  declared  the  Japanese 
went  to  bed,  but  about  every  bulletin  board 
there  is  now  always  an  eager  crowd  of  watch- 
ers. The  shout  of  "  Nippon  banzai !  "  from 
the  foreigner,  which  means  "  Good  luck  to 
Japan,"  always  gets  a  grateful  response  from 
the  child  in  the  street,  the  coolie  with  his  rick- 
sha, policeman  on  his  beat,  or  the  Japanese 
gentleman  in  his  carriage. 

And  then  the  stories  I  heard  of  the  devotion 


14         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

and  sacrifice  of  the  people  who  are  left  at 
home !  The  women  let  their  hair  go  undressed 
once  a  month  that  they  may  contribute  each 
month  the  price  of  the  dressing — five  sen.  A 
gentleman  discovered  that  every  servant  in  his 
household,  from  butler  down,  was  contributing 
a  certain  amount  of  his  wages  each  month, 
and  in  consequence  offered  to  raise  wages  just 
the  amount  each  servant  was  giving  away. 
The  answer  was : 

"  Sir,  we  cannot  allow  that;  it  is  an  honor 
for  us  to  give,  and  it  would  be  you  who  would 
be  doing  our  duty  for  us  to  Japan." 

A  Japanese  lady  apologized  profusely  for 
being  late  at  dinner.  She  had  been  to  the  sta- 
tion to  see  her  son  off  for  the  front,  where 
already  were  three  of  her  sons. 

Said  another  straightway: 

"  How  fortunate  to  be  able  to  give  four  sons 
to  Japan  I  " 

In  a  tea-house  I  saw  an  old  woman  with 
blackened  teeth,  a  servant,  who  bore  herself 
proudly,  and  who,  too,  was  honored  because 
she  had  sent  four  sons  to  the  Yalu.    Hundreds 


THE    TRAIL    OF    THE    SAXON         15 

and  thousands  of  families  are  denying  them- 
selves one  meal  a  day  that  they  may  give  more 
to  their  country.  And  one  rich  merchant,  who 
has  already  given  100,000  yen,  has  himself  cut 
off  one  meal,  and  declares  that  he  will  if  neces- 
sary live  on  one  the  rest  of  his  life  for  the  sake 
of  Japan. 

There  is  a  war  play  on  the  boards  of  one 
theatre.  The  heroine,  a  wife,  says  that  her  un- 
born child  in  a  crisis  like  this  must  be  a  man- 
child,  and  that  he  shall  be  reared  a  soldier. 
To  provide  means,  she  will  herself,  if  neces- 
sary, go  to  the  yoshiwara. 

On  every  gateway  is  posted  a  red  slab  where 
a  man  has  gone  to  the  war,  marked  "  Gone  to 
the  front  " — to  be  supplanted  with  a  black  one 
— "  Bravery  forever  " — should  he  be  brought 
home  dead.  And  when  he  is  brought  home 
dead  his  body  is  received  at  the  station  by  his 
kin  with  proud  faces  and  no  tears.  The  Roman 
mother  has  come  back  to  earth  again,  and  it  is 
the  Japanese  mother  who  makes  Japan  the  high 
priestess  of  patriotism  among  the  nations  of  the 
world.     In  that  patriotism  are  the  passionate 


16         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

fealty  of  the  subject  to  his  king,  the  love  of  a 
republic  for  its  flag,  and  straightway  the 
stranger  feels  that  were  the  Mikado  no  more 
and  Japan  a  republic  to-morrow,  this  war 
would  go  on  just  as  it  would  had  the  Japan- 
ese only  this  Mikado  and  no  land  that  he 
could  call  his  own.  The  soldier  at  the  front 
or  on  the  seas  will  give  no  better  account  of 
himself  than  the  man,  woman,  or  child  who  is 
left  at  home,  and  a  national  spirit  like  this  is 
too  beautiful  to  be  lost. 

Here  forks  the  trail  of  the  Saxon.  One 
branch  goes  straight  to  the  Philippines.  The 
other  splits  here  into  a  thousand  tiny  paths — 
where  railway  coach  has  supplanted  the  palan- 
quin, battle-ship  the  war-junk,  electricity  the 
pictured  lantern;  where  factory  chimneys 
smoke  and  the  Japanese  seems  prouder  of  his 
commerce  than  of  his  art  and  his  exquisite 
manners;  where  the  boycott  has  started,  and 
even  the  word  strike — "  strikey,  strikey  "  it 
sounds — has  become  the  refrain  of  a  song. 
How  shallow,  after  all,  the  tiny  paths  are,  no 
man  may  know;  for  who  can  penetrate  the 


THE    TRAIL   OF   THE    SAXON  17 

mystery  of  Japanese  life  and  character — a 
mystery  that  has  been  deepening  for  a  thou- 
sand years.  Here  is  the  chief  lodge  of  the 
Order  of  Sealed  Lips  the  world  over,  and  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  empire  seems 
born  a  life-member.  It  may  be  Japan  who 
will  clasp  the  hands  of  the  Saxon  across  this 
Far  East.  And  yet  who  knows?  Were 
Mother  Nature  to  found  a  national  museum 
of  the  curiosities  in  plant  and  tree  that  human- 
ity has  wrested  from  her,  she  would  give  the 
star-chamber  to  Japan.  This  is  due,  maybe, 
to  the  Japanese  love  of  plant  and  tree  and  the 
limitations  of  space  that  forbid  to  both  full 
height.  Give  the  little  island  room,  and  the 
dwarf  pine  and  fruit-tree  may  become  in  time, 
perhaps,  as  great  a  curiosity  here  as  elsewhere  in 
the  world.  What  will  she  do — when  she  gets 
the  room?  The  Saxon  hands  may  never  meet. 
Japan  Saxonized  may,  in  turn,  Saxonize  China 
and  throw  the  tide  that  has  moved  east  and 
west,  some  day,  west  and  east  again. 


II 

HARDSHIPS  OF  THE  CAMPAIGN 

I  HAVE  taken  to  the  big  hills  in  some  despair 
and  to  rest  from  the  hardships  of  this  cam- 
paign. Truly  the  life  of  the  war  correspond- 
ent is  hard  in  Japan. 

The  Happy  Exile  left  America  three  years 
ago  with  a  Puck-purpose  of  girdling  the  world. 
He  got  no  farther  than  Japan,  and  here  most 
likely  he  will  rest.  He  is  a  big  man  and  a 
gentle  one,  and  I  have  seen  his  six-feet-two 
frame  quiver  with  joy  like  jelly  as  we  rick- 
shawed  through  the  streets,  he  pointing  out  to 
me  meanwhile  little  bits  of  color  and  life  on 
either  side.  I  have  heard  him  when  the  dusk 
rushes  seaward  muttering  half-unconsciously  to 
himself : 

"  I'm  so  glad  I  am  here.  I'm  so  glad  I  am 
here." 

It  is  the  "  lust  of  the  eye  "  he  says,  and  the 

18 


HARDSHIPS   OF   THE   CAMPAIGN     19 

lust  is  as  fierce  now  as  on  the  day  he  landed 
— which  is  rare ;  for  the  man  who  has  been  here 
before  has  genuine  envy  of  the  eye  that  sees 
Japan  for  the  first  time.  I  have  watched  the 
man  who  has  seen,  showing  around  the  man 
who  has  not,  with  a  look  of  benevolent  sym- 
pathy and  reflected  joy  such  as  one  may  catch 
on  the  face  of  a  middle-aged  gentleman  in  the 
theatre  who  is  watching  the  keen  delight  of 
some  youth  to  whom  he  is  showing  the  sights 
of  a  great  city.  The  Happy  Exile  was  a 
painter  once,  but  he  came,  saw  Japanese  art, 
and  was  conquered. 

"  I  have  never  touched  brush  to  canvas 
again.  What's  the  use?  Why,  I  can't  even 
draw  their  characters.  Other  nations  draw  this 
way  " ;  he  worked  his  hands  and  fingers  from 
the  wrist  and  elbow.  "  The  Japanese  learn, 
drawing  their  characters  in  childhood,  to  use 
the  whole  arm.  Imagine  the  breadth  and 
sweep  of  movement! "  The  Happy  Exile 
threw  up  both  hands.  "  It's  of  no  use,  at  least 
not  for  me.  I  have  given  it  up."  So  he  studies 
life  and  Myth  in  Japan,  collects  curios,  silks, 


20         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

and  satsuma,  writes  a  little,  dreams  a  good 
deal,  and  gives  up  his  whole  heart  to  his  eye. 
The  Happy  Exile  has  a  friend,  a  Japanese 
friend,  who  is  one  of  the  new  types  that  one 
finds  now  in  New  Japan.  His  name  is  Amene- 
mori.  He  is  the  husband  of  O-kin-san,  mistress 
of  the  tea-house  of  One  Hundred  and  One 
Steps,  who  herself  can  talk  with  her  guests 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  in  five  languages 
and  is  an  authority  on  tea-ceremonies  and  a 
poetess  of  some  distinction.  Amenemori  is  not 
only  a  linguist,  but  a  scholar.  He  has  English, 
French,  German,  Italian  and  Russian  at  his 
command,  and  more.  Not  long  ago  a  wander- 
ing Indian  priest  came  to  Yokohama  and  could 
talk  with  nobody.  Amenemori  tried  him  in 
Japanese,  Korean,  and  Chinese  without  success, 
and  the  two  finally  found  communication  in 
Sanscrit.  One  of  Lafcadio  Hearn's  books  is 
dedicated  to  him,  and  through  him  that  author 
acquired  the  widest  acquaintance  with  old  Jap- 
anese poetry  yet  attained  by  any  foreigner. 
Illustrating  the  change  that  has  taken  place  in 
an  ancient  Japanese  word  to  its  modern  form, 


HARDSHIPS    OF   THE    CAMPAIGN      21 

he  quotes  Chaucer  and  the  modern  equivalent 
for  the  Chaucerian  phrase  I 

But  the  lust  of  the  eye  I  Well,  the  eye  is 
all  the  stranger  has.  The  work  his  brain  does 
has  little  value.  No  matter  what  he  may  learn 
one  day,  that  thing  next  day  he  may  have  to 
unlearn.  The  eye  alone  gives  pleasure — to  the 
color-loving,  picture-loving  brain — delight  un- 
measurable:  but  the  eye  does  not  understand. 
The  ear  hears  strange  new  calls  and  sounds — 
unmusical  except  in  the  xylophonic  click  of 
wooden  getas,  the  plaintive  cry  of  the  blind 
masseur,  and  in  the  national  anthem,  which  is 
moving  beyond  words;  and  the  ear,  too,  does 
not  understand.  But  the  nose — "  that  despised 
poet  of  the  senses  " — his  faculty  holds  firm  the 
world  over.  In  Tokio  he  puts  on  sable  trap- 
pings at  sunset  that  would  gloom  the  dark  hour 
before  dawn.  You  will  get  used  to  it,  you  are 
told,  and  that  frightens  you,  for  you  don't  want 
to  get  used  to  it.  You  should  go  to  China, 
is  the  comfort  you  get,  and  in  that  suggestion 
is  no  comfort.  Straightway  you  swear,  and 
boldly: 


22         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

No  call  of  the  East  for  me, 

Till  the  stink  of  the  East  be  dead. 

That  is  why  a  man  who  comes  from  a  land 
where  he  can  fill  both  lungs  fearlessly  and 
stoop  to  drink  from  any  stream  that  his  feet 
may  cross  must  go  down  now  and  then  to  the 
sea  or  turn  his  face  firmly  to  the  hills. 

From  Yokohama  the  little  coaches  start 
slowly  for  the  country — so  slowly  that,  like 
Artemus  Ward,  you  wonder  if  it  wouldn't  be 
wise  sometimes  to  put  the  cow-catcher  on  be- 
hind. There  is  the  charm  of  thatched  cottage, 
green  squares  of  wind-shaken  barley,  long 
waving  grass  and  little  hills,  pine-crowned; 
but  by  and  by  your  heart  gets  wrung  with 
sympathy  for  Mother  Nature.  Every  blade  of 
grass,  every  rush,  every  little  tree  seems  to  have 
been  let  grow  only  through  human  sufferance. 
It  is  as  though  a  solemn  court-martial  had  been 
held  on  the  life  of  everything  that  grew  not 
to  make  feed  for  man  and  man  alone,  for  no- 
where are  there  sheep,  cattle,  horses,  and  rarely 
even  a  dog.  Here  and  there  the  little  hills 
have  been  cut  down  sheer,  that  the  rice  squares 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      23 

might  burrow  under  them.  The  face  of  the 
earth  looked  terribly  man-handled,  but  the  ef- 
fect was  still  lovely.  The  little  rows  of  pines 
on  the  hills  seemed  to  have  been  so  left  that 
no  rearrangement  would  have  been  necessary 
to  transfer  them  to  canvas,  and  even  the  crown 
of  a  pine  sloping  from  a  group  of  its  fellows 
seemed  to  have  been  spared  for  no  other  reason 
than  picturesque  effect.  Perhaps  for  that  rea- 
son Nature  herself  seemed  to  enter  no  protest. 
It  was  as  though  she  said : 

"  I  know  your  needs,  my  children,  you  do 
only  what  you  must;  you  know  just  what  you 
do,  and  I  forgive  you,  for  you  rob  me  with 
loving  hands.  A  little  farther  on  is  my  ref- 
uge." 

And  a  little  farther  on  was  her  refuge  in 
the  big  volcanic  hills,  guarded  by  great  white 
solemn  Fuji,  where  birds  sing  and  torrents  lash 
with  swirling  foam  and  a  great  roar  through 
deep  gorges  or  drop  down  in  white  cataracts 
through  masses  of  trembling  green.  But  you 
have  an  hour  first  in  an  electric  car,  with  a  bell 
ringing  always  to  keep  multitudinous  children 


24  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

from  the  track,  along  the  old  road  that  the 
Daimios  took  in  their  semi-annual  trip  from 
their  up-country  estates  to  Tokio  and  back  again 
— the  Daimios — gorgeously  arrayed,  in  palan- 
quins, with  their  retinues  following,  while  the 
people  kept  their  foreheads  to  the  earth  and 
dared  not  raise  their  eyes — honors  which  they 
no  longer  pay  even  to  the  great  Mikado.  It 
seemed  a  sacrilege.  Then  an  hour  in  a  rick- 
shaw— two  pushers  behind,  up  a  deep  winding 
gorge  from  which  comes  the  wild  call  of  free 
rushing  water,  and  you  are  in  the  untainted  air 
of  the  primeval  Cumberland. 

It  is  pleasant  to  be  welcomed  by  a  host  and 
a  host  of  servants  bent  at  right  angles  with 
courtesy — a  courtesy  that  follows  you  every- 
where. Ten  minutes  later,  as  I  stepped  from 
behind  the  screen — the  ever-present  screen — in 
my  room,  the  Maid  of  Miyanoshita — another 
new  type  in  New  Japan — stood  bowing  at  my 
door,  and  I  am  afraid  I  gave  her  scant  greeting. 
I  had  read  of  feminine  service,  and  Saxon-like 
I  was  fearsome ;  but  how  could  I  know  that  she 
was  the  daughter  of  mine  host — a  man  more 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      25 

well-to-do  than  most  of  his  guests,  who  include 
the  princes  and  princesses  at  times  of  the  royal 
household — and  that  she  had  come  merely  to 
welcome  me*?  And  how  could  I  know  that  she 
was  a  lady,  as  I  understand  the  word,  for  how 
can  a  stranger  know  who  is  gentlewoman  or 
gentleman  in  a  land  where  gentle  manners  are 
universal,  when  he  has  not  learned  the  distinc- 
tions of  dress  and  when  face  and  voice  give  no 
unerring  guidance  in  any  land?  Later  I  was 
sorry  and  tried  to  make  good,  but  here  lack  of 
breeding  is  condoned  in  a  barbarian.  Straight- 
way one  little  maid  came  in  to  build  a  fire, 
while  another  swiftly  unpacked  my  bag,  laid 
out  evening  clothes,  and  played  the  part  of  a 
blind  automatic  valet.  Embarrassment,  even 
consciousness,  fled  like  a  flash,  as  it  must  flee 
with  any  man  who  is  not  blackguard  or  fool, 
and  I  am  thinking  now  how  foreigners  have 
lied  about  the  women  of  Japan. 

I  want  no  better  dinner  than  the  one  that 
came  later,  and  I  went  to  sleep  with  mountain 
air  coming  like  balm  through  the  windows,  the 
music  of  hushed  falling  water  somewhere,  and 


26         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

a  cherry  tree  full-blown  shining  like  a  great 
white,  low  star  at  the  foot  of  a  mountain 
that  rose  darkly  toward  the  stars.  This  life 
of  the  war  correspondent  in  Japan — truly  'tis 
hard  I 

Next  morning  I  heard  the  scampering  of 
many  feet  and  much  laughter  in  the  hallways, 
and  I  thought  there  were  children  out  there 
playing  games.  It  was  those  brown  little 
chambermaids  hard  at  work.  I  wonder  whence 
comes  the  perpetual  sunny  cheer  of  these  little 
people;  whether  it  be  simple  temperament  or 
ages  of  philosophy — or  both. 

"  You  have  your  troubles,"  they  say,  "  there- 
fore I  must  not  burden  you  with  mine."  And 
a  man  will  tell  you,  with  a  smile,  of  some 
misfortune  that  is  almost  breaking  his  heart. 

The  little  maid  who  had  unpacked  my  bag 
brought  breakfast  to  me,  and  I  could  see  that 
I  was  invested  with  some  interest  which  was 
not  at  all  apparent  the  night  before.  Presently 
it  came  out : 

"  You  are  going  to  Korea?  " 

"  Yes,  I  am  going  to  Korea." 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      27 

"  I  want  to  go  to  Korea,  but  they  won't 
let  girls  go." 

"  Why  do  you  want  to  go  to  Korea?  " 

For  the  first  time  I  saw  Japanese  eyes  flash, 
and  her  answer  came  like  the  crack  of  a  whip : 

"To  fight  I" 

Among  the  thousands  of  applications,  many 
of  them  written  in  blood,  which  the  war  office 
has  received  from  men  who  are  anxious  to  go 
to  the  front,  is  one  from  just  such  a  girl.  In 
her  letter  she  said  that  she  was  the  last  of  an 
old  Samurai  family.  Her  father  was  killed  in 
the  war  with  China ;  her  only  brother  died  dur- 
ing the  Boxer  troubles.  She  begged  to  be  al- 
lowed to  take  the  place  in  the  ranks  which  had 
always  belonged  to  her  family.  She  could 
shoot,  she  said,  and  ride;  and  it  would  be  a 
lasting  disgrace  if  her  family  name  should  be 
missing  from  the  rolls,  where  it  has  had  an 
honored  place  for  centuries,  now  that  her  coun- 
try and  her  Emperor  are  in  such  sore  need. 

After  breakfast  I  climbed  the  mountain  that 
I  could  see  from  my  window — it  ran  not  so 
high  by  day — and  up  there  great  Fuji  was  gra- 


28  FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

cious  enough  for  one  fleeting  moment  to  throw 
back  the  gray  mantle  of  a  cloud  and  bare  for 
me  for  the  first  time  his  sacred  white  head. 
Coming  down,  I  found  a  pretty  story  of  Amer- 
ican Chivalry  and  the  Maid  of  Miyanoshita. 
There  was  a  man  here  whose  nationality  will 
not  be  mentioned,  and  a  big  young  American 
who  hasn't  lost  the  traditions  of  his  race  and 
country.  With  the  lack  of  understanding  that 
is  not  uncommon  with  foreigners  during  their 
first  days  in  Japan,  this  particular  foreigner 
said  something  to  the  little  lady  that  he  would 
not  have  said  under  similar  circumstances  at 
home.  Now,  just  behind  the  hotel  are  two 
foaming  cascades  which  drop  into  a  clear  pool 
of  water  wherein  sport  many  fishes  big  and 
little — green,  silver,  gold,  or  mottled  with 
white  and  scarlet — which  it  is  the  pleasure  of 
the  guests  to  feed.  A  few  minutes  later  there 
was  a  commotion  on  the  margin  of  the  pond, 
and  those  fishes,  gathering  as  usual  for  biscuit 
and  sugar,  got  a  surprise.  The  American  had 
invited  the  other  foreigner  out  there,  and  the 
two  were  having  a  mighty  mill.    After  a  nice 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      29 

solar-plexus  landing,  the  American  caught  up 
his  opponent  and  threw  him  bodily  into  the 
fish-pond.  The  man  disappeared  next  morning 
by  the  first  train.  Wallah,  but  it  was  grateful 
to  the  soul — striking  a  Saxon  trail  like  that! 

After  tiffin  I  was  struggling  with  Japanese 
idioms  in  a  guide-book.  "  I  will  be  glad  to 
help  you,"  said  the  Maid  of  Miyanoshita. 

She  had  gone  to  school  in  a  convent  in  To- 
kio.  Only  Japanese  girls  and  a  few  Eurasians, 
girls '  whose  fathers  are  foreigners,  were  stu- 
dents, and  they  were  allowed  to  speak  only 
French.  There  she  was  taught  to  read  and 
write  English.  To  speak  it,  she  had  learned 
only  from  guests  at  the  hotel. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  if  the  Japanese  in  this 
book  is  as  bad  as  the  English,  I  don't  think  I 
want  to  learn  it."    She  looked  at  the  book. 

"  It  iss  bad,"  she  said;  "  there  are  words  here 
you  must  not  use."  (It  is  impossible  to  give 
dialectic  form  to  her  quaint  variations  from 
normal  pronunciation.)  By  and  by  we  found 
an  example. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  "  sukimas  means  '  I  like.* 


30  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

I  like  flowers,  birds,  and  so  on,  but  you  must 
not  use  that — "  with  one  pointed  finger  on  a 
word  that  I  proceeded  straightway  to  damn 
forever. 

"  What  is  the  proper  word  for  that  word?  " 

"  Ai  suru,"  she  said. 

"  And  what  does  that  mean?  " 

A  vertical  line  of  mental  effort  broke  the 
smoothness  of  her  forehead. 

"  It  iss  deeper  than  '  like.'  " 

"  Oh,"  I  said.  She  continued  her  mental 
search  for  an  English  equivalent.  I  tried  to 
help. 

"Love?"  I  ventured. 

With  straight  eyes  she  met  purely  imper- 
sonal inquiry  with  response  even  more  imper- 
sonal. 

"  Yess,"  she  said. 

That  afternoon  I  walked  farther  up  the 
gorge,  past  curio  shops,  with  the  river  roaring 
far  beneath  and  water  tumbling  from  far 
above,  and  I  turned  in  for  a  moment  where 
the  word  "  Archery  "  curved  in  big  letters  over 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      31 

a  doorway,  to  see  an  old  chap  put  eight  arrows 
out  of  ten  in  a  small  target  a  hundred  feet 
away,  and  triumphantly  shout: 

**  Russian!" 

And  then  on  past  tea-houses  and  workshops 
and  rice-mills  with  undershot  water-wheels 
such  as  I  had  left  in  the  Cumberland  Moun- 
tains. In  a  rice  square  below  and  beyond  me 
three  little  girls  were  playing.  When  they  saw 
me  they  ran  toward  the  road,  stooping  now  and 
then  to  pick  up  something  as  they  ran.  The 
littlest  one  held  up  to  me  a  bunch  of  blue  flow- 
ers. I  was  thrilled;  here  I  thought  is  where  I 
get  the  courtesy  of  the  land  even  from  the  peas- 
ant class  and  untainted  by  the  rude  manners  of 
the  Saxon  and  his  Caucasian  kind.  I  took  off 
my  hat. 

"  Arigato,"  I  said,  which  means  "  Thank 
you."     Out  came  the  mite's  chubby  hand. 

"  Shingal  "  she  said,  "  mucha  shingal  " 

Now  I  have  not  been  able  to  find  anyone 
who  knows  what  "  shinga  "  means  except  the 
little  highway  robbers  who  held  me  up  in  the 
road  and  made  it  plain  by  signs.    I  went  down 


32         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

into  my  pocket  for  a  coin.  Up  stepped  num- 
ber two  of  the  little  hold-ups,  with  number 
three  in  close  support;  but  I  was  too  disap- 
pointed and  sore,  and  I  declined.  Those  three 
little  ones  followed  me  half  a  mile  and  up 
many  score  of  steep  steps  to  a  temple  in  a  grove, 
still  proffering  flowers  and  saying, 

"  Shinga."    It  was  sad. 

Going  back  I  met  another  mite  of  a  girl  in 
a  many-colored  kimono.  She  said  something. 
I  am  afraid  I  glowered,  but  she  said  it  again, 
with  a  bow  and  a  smile,  and  it  was — 

"  Konnichi-wa  I  "  which  means  "  Good- 
day."  Then  wasn't  I  sorry!  This  was  the 
real  thing.  I  took  off  my  hat,  and  then  and 
there  this  little  maid  and  I  exchanged  elabo- 
rate Oriental  ceremonies  in  the  middle  of  the 
road,  concluding  with  three  right-angle  bows  of 
farewell,  each  saying  three  times  that  very 
beautiful  Japanese  good-by, 

"  Sayonarav" 

I  went  on  cheered  and  thinking.  This  was 
Old  and  New  Japan,  the  lingering  beauty  of 
one,  the  trail  of  the  tourist  over  the  other,  and 


HARDSHIPS   OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      33 

this  was  Japan  in  general.  When  you  are 
looking  for  a  thing  you  get  something  else; 
when  you  look  for  something  else  you  get  what 
you  were  looking  for.  The  trouble  was  that 
in  neither  case  should  I  have  been  surprised, 
for  the  Japanese  even  say, 

"It  is  not  surprising  if  the  surprising  does 
not  surprise,"  which  must  be  thought  about  for 
a  while.  And  then  again.  What's  the  odds, 
no  matter  what  happens. 

"  Shikata  ga  nai,"  says  the  Japanese;  "It 
can't  be  helped" — a  fatalistic  bit  of  philoso- 
phy that  may  play  an  important  part  on  many 
future  battle-fields. 


The  Little  Maid  of  Miyanoshita  and  I  were 
tossing  bits  of  cracker  to  the  gold-fishes  in  the 
pond,  and  each  bit  made  a  breaking,  flashing 
rainbow  as  they  rushed  for  it  in  a  writhing 
heap.  She  had  never  been  to  America  nor  to 
England. 

"Wouldn't  you  like  to  go?" 

"  Verry  much,"  she  said. 


34  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

"Well,  aren't  you  going  some  day*?" 

"  I  hope  so,  but — "  she  paused;  "  if  I  wore 
these  clothes  the  people  would  follow  me  about 
the  streets.  If  I  wore  European  clothes,  I 
would  look  like — what  you  say — a  fright." 

"  Never !  "    Again  she  shook  her  head. 

"  Yess,  yess  I  would."  And  the  pity  of  it 
is  I  am  afraid  she  was  right. 

The  Little  Maid  did  not  walk  the  hills 
much. 

"  Japanese  men  do  not  like  for  women  to  go 
about  much,"  she  said.  "  My  uncle  does  not 
like  that  I  go  about  alone,  but  my  father  he 
does  not  care.    He  has  been  in  America." 

"  It  is  perfectly  safe?  " 

"  Yes,  perrfectly  safe.  Is  it  not  so  in  Amer- 
ica? " 

"Well,  no,  not  always;  at  least  not  in  the 
South,  where  I  come  from." 

She  did  not  ask  why,  though  I  should  not 
have  been  surprised  to  learn  that  she  knew, 
and  I  did  not  explain. 

She  was  very  fond  of  Schiller,  she  said,  and 
she  had  read  many  American  and  English  nov- 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      35 

els.  She  liked  "  The  Crisis  "  very  much — she 
did  not  mention  others — though  she  liked  bet- 
ter the  novels  that  were  written  by  women. 

"Because  you  understand  them  better?" 

"Not  only  that,"  she  said  slowly,  "but  I 
think  that  men  who  write  novels  try  to  make 
the  women  happy,  and  the  women  who  write 
novels  do  not  do  that  so  much ;  and  I  think  the 
women  must  be  nearer  the  truth." 

She  turned  suddenly  on  me : 

"  Tou  have  written  a  book." 

"  Guilty,"  I  said. 

"  And  what  does  that  mean?  " 

"  It  means  that  I  have,"  I  said  lamely.  We 
talked  international  differences. 

"  American  women  use  very  many  pins,  is  it 
not  true?  " 

"  I  think  it  is  true,"  I  said. 

"  We  do  not,"  she  said;  "  we  use  what  you 
call " — with  her  fingers  on  a  little  cord  at  the 
breast  of  her  kimono — "  strings.  But,"  she 
added  suddenly,  "  an  American  says  to  me  that 
I  must  not  speak  of  such  things." 

"Tut!" 


36  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

"  Well,"  she  said,  "  I  do  not  see  anything 
wrong." 

In  America,  I  explained,  we  put  the  woman 
in  a  high  place  and  looked  up  at  her. 

"  Is  it  not  so  in  Japan'?  "  I  said. 

"  No,"  she  said  simply,  "  it  is  not  so  in  Ja- 
pan." She  thought  a  while.  "  That  must  be 
very  nice  for  the  woman  in  America,"  she  said. 

"  I  think  it  is,"  I  said. 

"  But  then,"  she  said,  to  explain  the  mys- 
tery, "  they  are  so  well  ed-u-ca-ted." 

"  Well,  I  don't  think  it  is  because  they  are 
so  well  educated,"  I  said. 

"  Then  they  are  worthy,"  said  the  Little 
Maid. 

•  «••••• 

I  have  been  to  Big  Hell — a  climb  of  some 
three  thousand  feet  past  rice  squares  and  barley 
fields  and  little  forests  of  bamboo  trees,  where 
on  a  God-forsaken  mountain  top  sulphurous 
smoke  belches  into  the  clouds  that  drift  about 
it.  Now  smoke  suggests  human  habitation, 
human  food,  and  human  comfort,  and  that 
smoke  swirling  up  there  gave  the  spot  a  lone- 


HARDSHIPS   OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      37 

liness  unspeakable.  Under  you  the  gray  earth 
was  hot,  here  and  there  were  springs  of  boiling 
water,  and  the  ashy  crust  crackled  under  your 
feet.  Around  the  crest  we  went,  and  down 
through  a  forest  of  big  trees  left  standing  be- 
cause the  place  was  a  royal  preserve.  The  ab- 
sence of  animals,  tame  or  wild,  has  constantly 
depressed  me  ever  since  I  have  been  in  Japan. 
Even  up  there  in  the  hills  I  had  seen  nothing 
hopping,  crawling,  or  climbing  by  the  roadside 
or  in  the  woods,  and  I  could  see  nothing  now. 

"  Is  there  nothing  wild  up  here*?  "  I  said. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  the  guide,  "  there  are  deer 
and  monkeys."  If  he  had  said  there  were  do- 
dos I  could  have  been  no  more  surprised;  but 
to  this  day  I  have  seen  nothing  in  freedom 
except  a  few  birds  in  the  air. 

By  and  by  a  thatched  roof  came  in  view. 
The  path  led  sharply  around  one  corner  of  the 
house  and  I  was  brought  up  with  a  gasp.  I 
had  read  and  heard  much  about  bathing  cus- 
toms in  Japan.  The  government  has  tried,  I 
believe,  to  legislate  into  the  people  Occidental 
ideas  of  modesty.     One  regulation  provided 


38  FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

that  the  sexes  should  be  separated.  They  were 
separated — by  a  bamboo  rod  floating  on  the 
water.  Another  time  it  was  announced  that 
bathing  trunks  must  be  worn  at  a  certain  place 
by  the  sea.  One  old  chap  issued  leisurely  from 
his  house  on  the  hill-side  and  stalked  down 
without  clothes,  swinging  his  trunks  in  his 
hand.  After  he  got  into  the  water  he  put  the 
trunks  on,  and  as  soon  as  he  came  out  he  took 
them  off  again  and  stalked  home  swinging 
them  as  before. 

Well,  there  they  were,  old  and  young  and 
of  both  sexes,  and  it  was  apparent  that  the 
regulations  of  the  bamboo  rod  and  the  bathing 
trunks  had  not  reached  that  high.  It  was  a 
natural  Turkish  bath-house,  and  it  seems  that 
the  farmers  around  Big  Hell  furnish  a  certain 
amoimt  of  produce  each  year  to  the  proprietor 
for  the  privilege  of  hot  baths,  and  when  work 
is  slack  they  go  up  there — husbands  and  wives, 
sons  and  daughters — and  stay  for  days.  Ap- 
parently work  was  slack  just  then.  The  bath, 
some  ten  feet  square,  and  sunk  in  the  floor,  was 
screened  from  the  gaze  of  the  passing  pedes- 


HARDSHIPS   OF   THE    CAMPAIGN      39 

trian  and  the  coldness  of  the  outer  air  merely 
by  slender  bamboo  rods,  some  eighteen  inches 
apart.    It  was  full  to  the  brim. 

That  night  an  Englishman  seemed  greatly 
taken  with  Big  Hell. 

"  Most  extraordinary  I  "  he  said.  "  Do  you 
know,  they  never  minded  us  at  all — not  at 
all.  A  chap  had  a  camera,  and  one  dear  old 
lady  actually  stood  upright  when  he  was  tak- 
ing a  picture.  They  asked  me  to  come  in,  and 
I  really  think  I  would,  but — gad,  you  know, 
there  wasn't  any  room." 

The  key-note  of  this  symphony  of  ills  will 
not  be  sounded  here. 

She  could  play  the  koto  (the  harp),  and  the 
piano  a  little — could  the  Maid  of  Miyanoshita. 
She  would  play  neither  for  me,  but  that  after- 
noon she  would  take  me,  she  said,  to  hear  a 
friend  play  the  koto — an  elderly  friend,  whom 
she  called,  she  said,  her  aunt.  Later,  she  said 
she  had  asked  another  gentleman  also.  Now 
when  I  spoke  once  of  the  musical  click  of  the 
getas,  the  Happy  Exile  had  told  me  that  the 


40  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

wearers  often  chose  them,  taking  only  such 
pairs  as  pleased  the  individual  ear.  The  state- 
ment has  since  been  much  laughed  at,  so  I  asked 
the  Maid  of  Miyanoshita  for  confirmation. 
She  at  least  did  not  choose  her  getas  for  their 
sound. 

"  But,"  she  said,  "  the  Japanese  say  the 
getas  go— 

"  '  Kara-ko,  kara-ko,  kara-ko ! '  " 

The  notes  she  gave  were  the  notes  I  had 
heard  on  the  stone  platforms  of  every  station 
between  Tokio  and  Yokohama,  and  going 
straightway  to  the  piano  I  found  those  notes 
to  be  F  and  D  in  the  scale  of  F  Minor.  Let 
the  laugh  proceed.  The  Happy  Exile  possibly 
might  say  that  those  notes  were  the  prominent 
ones  in  some  old  national  song,  and  that  the 
geta-makers  had  been  unconsciously  reproduc- 
ing them  ever  since. 

It  was  raining.  Alack  and  alas!  the  Little 
Maid  carried  an  American  umbrella — impious 
trail  of  the  Saxon  I  while  the  Other  Man  and 
I  bore  picturesque  Japanese  ones  that  would 


HARDSHIPS    OF   THE    CAMPAIGN      41 

have  given  the  crowning  touch  to  her,  but 
looked  simply  ridiculous  over  us.  Thus  we 
went  to  meet  the  exquisite  courtesy  and  genu- 
ine kindness  of  a  real  Japanese  home. 

Two  kotos  were  played  for  us,  while  the 
players  sang  "  Wind  Among  the  Pines,"  and 
the  tale  of  the  fairies  who  fell  in  love  with 
the  fisherman. 

"  Do  you  like  Japanese  music'?  "  said  the 
Little  Maid  to  the  Other  Man. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  promptly,  lying  like  a  gen- 
tleman. 

"  Don't  you  think  it  is  rather  monotonous?  " 
she  asked. 

"  Well — um — um.  Don't  you  like  Japan- 
ese music*?  "  he  said,  taking  refuge. 

"  Well,"  she  said,  "  I  like  your  music  better, 
I  think.  It  is  more  lively  and  has  more  vari- 
ety." 

Then  we  had  tea,  and  after  tea  of  the  kind 
usually  served  in  Japan,  the  husband,  a  fierce 
Samurai  in  the  pictures  he  showed  us,  but  now 
a  genial,  broad-smiling  doctor  of  the  old  Jap- 
anese school,  insisted  that  we  should  take  bowls 


42  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

of  powdered  tea  which  he  prepared  with  his 
own  hands.  In  the  drinking  of  this  the  Little 
Maid  instructed  us.  We  were  to  take  the  bowl, 
the  left  hand  underneath,  the  fingers  of  the 
right  hand  clasped  about  it,  lift  it  to  the  fore- 
head, a  movement  of  unspoken  thanks,  and 
very  gently,  so  as  not  to  suggest  that  the  tea 
needed  to  be  dissolved,  were  to  roll  the  tea 
around  in  the  bowl  three  times  and  then  take 
one  drink — making  much  noise,  meanwhile, 
with  the  lips  to  show  how  much  we  enjoyed  it. 

"  That  is  very  vulgar  in  your  country,"  in- 
terrupted the  Little  Maid,  "is  it  not  so*?  " 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  lots  of  people  do  it,  but 
not  for  the  reason  of  courtesy." 

We  were  to  roll  it  around  three  times  more, 
and  then  drink  again;  three  times  more,  and  a 
third  drink,  leaving  this  time  but  a  little, 
which,  without  being  rolled  around  again,  was 
to  be  drunk  at  a  swallow — three  drinks  and 
one  swallow  to  the  bowl.  O-kin-san  says  that 
this  last  swallow  should  be  only  the  foam, 
which  must  be  drunk  to  show  that  the  tea  is 
so  good  that  the  guest  must  have  even  the 


HARDSHIPS    OF    THE    CAMPAIGN      43 

foam;  and  that  not  until  then  does  the  noise 
of  appreciation  come,  and  then  only  because 
the  foam  cannot  be  drunk  without  noise.  It 
was  well.  We  exchanged  autographs  and 
cards.  With  the  kind  permission  of  the  Little 
Maid's  aunt  we  took  pictures  of  the  interior, 
and  then  with  much  bowing  and  many  "  sayo- 
naras  "  we  passed  out  under  the  cherry  trees. 

"  We  say  '  Good-morning,'  "  said  the  Little 
Maid,  explaining  the  courtesies  of  Japanese 
greeting  and  good-by,  "and  we  bow;  and  we 
say  *  It  is  a  long  while  since  I  have  seen  you,' 
or  '  It  is  a  fine  day,'  and  we  bow  again.  At  the 
end  of  each  sentence  you  must  bow,  and  it  is 
the  same  when  you  say  good-by." 


Before  I  learned  that  the  Mikado  had  sent 
a  general  edict  through  the  land  that  all  for- 
eigners in  Japan  were  to  be  treated  with  par- 
ticular consideration  while  this  war  is  going  on 
— thus  making  it  safer  for  the  tourist  now  in 
this  country  than  it  ever  has  been  or  will  be, 
perhaps,  for  a  long  time — I  had  been  greatly 


44  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

impressed  by  the  absence  of  all  signs  of  dis- 
order, street  quarrels,  loud  talking,  and  by  the 
fact  that  in  Tokio,  one  of  the  largest  cities  in 
the  world,  one  could  go  about  day  or  night  in 
perfect  safety.  I  told  this  to  the  Maid  of 
Miyanoshita. 

"  So  desuka,"  she  said  without  surprise,  and 
that  means  "  Indeed."  And  when  she  said 
later  that  there  were  many  Japanese  novelists, 
but  they  did  not  write  love  stories,  I  was  re- 
minded further  that  I  had  seen  no  man  in  Ja- 
pan turn  his  head  to  look  at  a  woman  who  had 
passed  him — no  exchange  of  glances,  no  street 
gallantry  at  all. 

"  The  song  of  the  '  Goo-goo  Eyes,'  "  I  said, 
"  would  never  have  been  written  in  Japan." 

"  What  iss  '  Goo-goo  Eyes  '  *?  "  said  the  Lit- 
tle Maid,  mystified. 

Then  had  I  trouble — but  I  must  have  made 
it  clear  at  last. 

"  Perhaps  the  Japanese  girl  does  not  want 
to  be  seen — looking." 

"  Oh,  you  mean  that  she  may  look,  but  the 
foreigner  doesn't  see  it*?  " 


HARDSHIPS    OF   THE    CAMPAIGN     45 

"  Well,  we  are  all  human.  That  is  very 
frank,  is  it  not*?  " 

It  was  frank — very  frank — and  of  an  in- 
nocence not  to  be  misunderstood  save  by  a  fool. 
Then  I  got  a  degree. 

"  But  I  am  always  frank  with  you,  for  if 
you  are  what  you  say  '  guilty,'  I  think  you 
must  understand.  I  call  you  to  myself  a  Doc- 
tor of  Humanity." 

Wallah,  but  the  life  is  hard  I 


By  and  by  this  remarkable  Little  Maid  went 
on: 

"  The  Japanese  may  be  what  you  call  in 
love,  but  they  must  not  tell  it — must  not  even 
show  it." 

"  Not  even  the  men?  " 

"  No,  not  even  the  men.  Is  it  not  so  in  your 
country?  " 

I  laughed. 

"  No,  it  is  not  so  in  my  country."  I  found 
myself  suddenly  imitating  her  own  slow  speech. 
"  That's  the  first  thing  the  man  in  my  coun- 


46         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

try  does.  Sometimes  he  tells  it,  even  when  he 
can't  ask  the  girl  to  marry  him,  and  sometimes 
they  even  tell  it  over  there  when  they  don't 
mean  it." 

"So  desuka!" 

"  They  call  that  '  flirting.'  " 

"  Yes,  I  know  '  flirting,'  "  said  the  Little 
Maid. 

"  It  is  not  a  very  nice  word,"  I  said.  "  There 
is  no  flirting  in  Japan?  " 

"  There  is  no  chance.  Parents  and  friends 
make  marriage  in  Japan." 

"  They  don't  marry  for  love?  " 

"It  is  as  in  France — not  for  love.  And  in 
America"?  " 

"  Well,  we  don't  think  it  nice  for  people 
to  marry  unless  they  are  in  love." 

"  So  desuka,"  she  said,  which  still  means 
"  Indeed."    And  then  she  went  on: 

"  Japanese  girls  obey  their  parents."  And 
then  she  added,  rather  sadly,  I  thought,  "  and 
sometimes  they  are  very  unhappy." 

"And  what  then?" 

"  Oh,  deevorces — are  very  common  among 


HARDSHIPS   OF   THE   CAMPAIGN     47 

the  lower  classes,  but  among  the  middle  and 
upper  classes  it  is  verry  difficult." 

"  So  desuka  I  "  I  said,  for  I  was  surprised. 

"  So  desu,"  said  the  Little  Maid,  which  is 
the  proper  answer. 

The  Maid  of  Miyanoshita  loves  flowers,  and 
at  sunset  this  afternoon  I  saw  her  coming  down 
from  her  garden,  where  she  had  been  at  work. 
She  had  a  great  round  straw  hat  on  her  black 
hair.  I  got  her  to  draw  it  about  her  face  with 
both  hands,  and  with  a  camera  she  was  caught 
as  she  laughed.  We  went  down  the  steps  and 
stopped  above  the  cascade  which  shook  the 
water  where  the  goldfishes  were  playing. 

Now  I  have  been  a  month  in  Japan;  I  have 
seen  the  opening  of  the  Diet,  heard  the  Em- 
peror chant  the  fact  that  he  was  at  peace  with 
all  the  world  save  Russia,  and  observed  that 
he  must  show  origin  from  the  gods  in  other 
ways  than  in  his  stride.  I  have  dined  with  the 
gracious  representative  of  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
and  his  staff,  who  seem  to  have  taken  on  an 
Oriental  suavity  that  bodes  well  for  our  inter- 


48         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

ests  in  this  Far  East,  and  have  seen  an  Im- 
perial Highness  play  the  delicate  and  difB- 
cult  double  role  of  hand-shaking  Democrat  to 
Americans  and  God-head  to  his  own  people — 
while  both  looked  on.  I  have  eaten  a  Japanese 
dinner  at  the  Maple  Club,  while  Geishas  and 
dancing-girls  held  fast  the  wondering  Occiden- 
tal eye;  have  heard,  there,  American  college 
songs  sung  by  Japanese  statesmen,  and  have 
joined  hands  with  them  in  a  swaying  perform- 
ance of  "  Auld  Lang  Syne."  I  have  seen 
wrestling  matches  that  looked  at  first  sight  like 
two  fat  ladies  trying  to  push  each  other  out 
of  a  ring — but  which  was  much  more.  I  have 
been  to  the  theatre,  to  find  the  laugh  checked 
at  my  lips  and  to  sit  thereafter  in  silence,  mys- 
tification, and  wonder.  I  have  tossed  pennies 
to  children — the  "  babies "  who  here  "  are 
kings  " — while  wandering  through  blossoming 
parks  and  among  people  whom  I  cannot  yet 
realize  as  real.  I  have  visited  shrines,  temples; 
have  heard  the  wail  of  kite  and  the  croak  of 
raven  over  the  tombs  of  the  Shoguns,  and  have 
seen  a  Holy  Father  beating  a  drum  and  pray- 


HARDSHIPS    OF   THE    CAMPAIGN      49 

ing  a  day-long  prayer  with  a  cigarette-stub  be- 
hind one  ear.  I  have  learned  that  this  is  the 
land  of  the  seductive  "  chit "  and  the  deceptive 
yen  which  doubles  your  gold  when  you  arrive 
and  makes  you  think  that  when  you  have  spent 
fifty  cents  you  still  have  a  dollar  of  it  left. 
Moreover,  I  have  seen  the  glory  of  cherry- 
blossoms.  But  of  all  these  trifles  and  more — 
more,  perhaps,  anon.  I  pulled  a  little  red 
guide-book  out  of  my  pocket. 

"  That  word,"  I  asked,  pointing  to  the 
proper  one,  "  would  you  use  that  word  to  your 
— well,  your  mother*?  " 

"  No,"  she  said  very  slowly,  and  with 
straight  eyes,  again  answering  impersonal  in- 
quiry with  response  even  more  impersonal, 
"  I — don' — don't — think — you — would — use 
— that  word — to  your — mother." 

The  sunlight  lay  only  on  the  great  white 
crest  of  Fuji.  Everywhere  else  the  swift  dusk 
of  Japan  was  falling.  In  it  the  cherry-tree 
was  fast  taking  on  the  light  of  a  great  white 
star.    In  the  grove  above  us  a  nightingale  sang. 

Truly  'tis  hard. 


Ill 

LINGERING   IN    TOKIO 

I  MIGHT  as  well  confess,  I  suppose,  that  these 
"  Hardships  of  the  Campaign,"  pleasant  as  they 
are,  ecstatic  as  they  might  be  to  an  untroubled 
mind,  constitute  a  bluff  pure  and  simple. 
Here  goes  another,  but  it  shall  be  my  last,  and 
I  shall  write  no  more  until  the  needle  of  my 
compass  points  to  Manchuria.  A  month  ago 
the  first  column  got  away  when  the  land  was 
lit  with  the  glory  of  cherry-blossoms.  We 
have  been  leaving  every  week  since — next  week 
we  leave  again.  One  man  among  us  now  calls 
himself  a  cherry-blossom  correspondent.  He 
was  lucky  to  say  it  first.  Clear  across  the 
Pacific  we  can  hear  the  chuckle  at  home  over 
our  plight  even  from  the  dear  ones  who  sent  us 
to  Japan.  If  it  were  not  such  a  tragedy  it 
would  be  very  funny  indeed. 

The  stars  float  high  in  the  sky  of  Japan,  so 
that  when  the  moon  rises,  a  vaster  dome  is  lit 

50 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  51 

up  than  I  have  ever  seen  anywhere  else  in  the 
world.  The  first  moon  I  saw  in  Japan  was 
rising  over  the  Bluff  where  the  foreigners  live 
in  Yokohama,  and  climbing  slowly  toward 
those  distant  stars.  The  Happy  Exile  and  I 
had  climbed  a  narrow,  winding,  bush-bordered 
alley,  broken  here  and  there  with  short  flights 
of  stone  steps,  and  we  sat  on  mats  in  his  Jap- 
anese home.  Somewhere  outside  a  nightingale 
was  singing  and  the  fine  needle-point  of  the 
first  cicada  was  jabbing  vibrations  into  the 
night  air.  To  the  left  of  the  Happy  Exile 
was  a  beautiful  box  of  lacquer,  and  he  reached 
out  a  caressing  hand  for  it.  That  was  his  net- 
suke  box,  and  he  pulled  out  little  lacquer  trays 
in  which  lay  his  diminutive  treasures. 

"  I  have  only  about  forty  here,"  he  said, 
"  but  they  are  all  good.  The  dealers  can't  fool 
me  now,  and  if  ever  a  new  netsuke  is  brought 
in  from  any  part  of  Japan,  the  owner  directly 
or  indirectly  lets  me  know  it  is  here.  Some- 
times I  will  strike  one  in  some  far  interior 
town,  but  I  know  it  has  been  sent  on  there 
ahead  of  me,  that  I  may  think  I  have  stumbled 


62         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

on  a  treasure.  My  big  collection  is  at  home — 
and  do  you  know  that  a  man  in  Boston  has 
perhaps  the  best  set  in  the  world*?  They  have 
risen  in  value  enormously,  and  are  rising  all 
the  time.  There  are  not  so  many  imitations 
as  people  suppose,  for  the  reason  that  the  carvers 
can't  afford  to  spend  the  time  that  is  necessary 
to  make  even  a  good  deception.  You  see,  in 
the  old  days  each  daimio  had  his  carvers  who 
did  nothing  but  make  netsukes^  and  all  time 
was  theirs." 

Then  he  began  taking  them  out.  Each  one 
represented  a  myth,  a  tradition,  or  a  proverb. 

"  I  love  these  things  not  only  for  their  ex- 
quisite carving  and  their  color  and  age,  but 
because  they  are  so  significant  in  reflecting  Jap- 
anese life  and  character.  You  have  no  idea 
how  much  you  can  learn  about  Japan  from 
studying  these  curios." 

Whiskey  and  soda  were  brought  in.  We 
watched  the  moon,  listened  to  the  nightingale, 
and  the  Happy  Exile's  talk  drifted  to  old  Jap- 
anese poetry — to  the  little  seventeen-syllable 
form  in  which  the  Japanese  has  caught  a  pict- 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  53 

ure,  a  mood,  one  swift  impression,  or  a  sorrow. 
Here  are  three  that  he  gave  me — but  inaccu- 
rately he  said :  "A  mother  is  sitting  on  a  mat, 
perhaps  alone.  The  wind  rattles  the  fragile 
wall  and  she  turns: 

"  The  east  wind  blowing ; 
Oh,  the  little  finger-holes 
Through  the  shogis  !  " 

Now,  shogis  are  the  little  squares  of  latticed 
paper  that  make  the  fragile  wall,  and  mischiev- 
ous children  delight  in  thrusting  their  fingers 
through  them.  Those  little  finger-holes  were 
made  by  the  vanished  hand  of  a  dead  child. 

This  is  a  picture  in  three  strokes : 

Moonlight ; 

Across  the  mat 

The  shadow  of  a  pine. 

Think  of  that  for  a  while. 

And  here  is  another  mother-cry  for  a  dead 
child.  There  are  summer  days  in  which  every 
Japanese  child  that  can  toddle  is  chasing 
dragon-flies,  and  the  children  who  die  must  pass 
through  a  hundred  worlds.  So  this  mother's 
thought  runs  thus: 


54  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

Oh,  little  catcher  of  dragon-flies, 
I  wonder  how  far 
You've  gone. 

But  I  like  best  the  first: 

The  east  wind  blowing; 
Oh,  the  little  finger-holes 
Through  the  shogis ! 

We  drifted  out  into  the  night  air.  Every 
house  was  dark  and  quiet.  The  Happy  Exile 
stopped  once  to  pat  a  yellow  cur  on  the  head. 

"  All  these  people  know  me,"  he  said,  "  and 
I  can  step  into  any  house  without  a  word  and 
sleep  the  night."  But  we  followed  that  nar- 
row alley  up  long  flights  of  narrow,  winding 
steps,  under  thick  bushes  that  arched  above  us 
and  shattered  the  moonbeams  about  our  feet. 
There  was  not  a  cloud  in  the  sky  when  we 
reached  the  top  of  the  bluff,  and  I  felt  for  the 
first  time  what  the  magic  of  this  land  was  to 
the  Happy  Exile.  The  moon  was  soaring  on 
toward  those  stars — the  stars  that  float  high 
in  this  sky  of  Japan. 

Once  I  took  refuge  in  a  wrestling-match. 
I  found  a  great  pagoda-like,  circus-like  tent 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  55 

made  of  bamboo  with  matting  for  a  roof.  Out- 
side long  streamers  of  various  colors  floated 
from  the  tops  of  long  poles.  High  above  and 
on  a  little  platform  supported  by  four  bamboos 
a  man  was  beating  a  drum.  He  had  started 
beating  that  drum  at  daybreak.  About  the  en- 
trance and  around  the  big,  fragile  structure  was 
the  same  crowd  of  men  and  boys  that  you 
would  find  at  an  American  circus.  To  get  in 
I  paid  two  yen.  Had  my  skin  been  yellow  and 
my  eyes  slant  I  would  have  dropped  but  one. 
The  arena  inside  was  amphitheatrical  in  shape 
with  three  broad  tiers  of  benches  on  which 
squatted  the  spectators.  In  the  centre  and 
under  a  bamboo  roof  was  a  hummock  of  dirt 
about  two  feet  high.  Four  pillars  swathed 
with  red  and  blue  supported  this  roof,  and  from 
each  pillar  was  stretched  a  streamer  from  which 
dangled  little  banners  covered  with  Chinese 
ideographs.  A  ring  some  twelve  feet  in  diam- 
eter was  dug  into  the  dirt  hummock  and  in  the 
centre  of  this  ring  were  two  huge  fat  men,  stark 
naked  except  for  a  breech-clout.  As  I  came 
in,  they  rose  and  took  hold.     To  the  Saxon  it 


56  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

looked  at  first  glance  like  two  fat  ladies  simply 
trying  to  push  each  other  out  of  the  ring,  and 
I  came  near  laughing  aloud.  Before  I  had  ap- 
proached ten  steps  one  of  the  two  fat  men 
touched  one  foot  outside  of  the  ring.  He  had 
lost  and  the  bout  was  over.  Now  two  more 
came  walking  in  with  great  dignity.  They 
mounted  the  arena  and  turned  their  backs  upon 
each  other.  Then  each  stretched  out  his  right 
leg  with  his  right  hand  on  the  knee,  raised  it 
high  in  the  air  and  brought  it  down  on  the  earth 
with  a  mighty  stamp.  The  same  performance 
with  the  left  leg,  and  then  they  strained  down- 
ward until  their  buttocks  almost  touched  the 
earth.  Turning,  they  squatted  on  their  heels 
opposite  each  other  at  the  edge  of  the  ring,  and 
each  man  slapped  his  hands  together  gently, 
stretched  them  out  at  full  length  and  turned 
the  palms  over.  This  was  a  salute — the  Jap- 
anese equivalent  of  the  Saxon  pugilist's  hand- 
shake. Each  walked  then  to  one  of  the  posts 
from  which  hung  a  little  box  of  salt,  and  his 
second  handed  him  there  water  in  a  sake  cup. 
He  rinsed  his  mouth,  spurted  the  water  out,  took 


LINGERING   IN    TOKIO  57 

a  pinch  of  salt  and  threw  it  into  the  ring.  One 
of  them  stooped  and  plucked  a  few  blades  of 
grass  from  the  sod  and  threw  them  also  into  the 
ring.  Both  these  acts  were  meant  to  drive  the 
spirits  of  evil  away,  and  it  was  all  so  serious  that 
I  was  aroused  at  once.  Four  times  they  squatted 
like  two  huge  game-cocks,  and  four  times  they 
got  up  slowly,  strolled  leisurely  to  the  salt-box 
and  the  sake  cup.  At  last  they  got  together, 
and  there  was  a  mighty  tussle,  and  to  my  as- 
tonishment, one  of  those  giants  threw  the  other 
over  his  head  and  landed  him  some  eight  feet 
outside  the  ring.  Apparently  there  was  more 
in  it  than  was  evident  to  the  casual  eye,  and  it 
was  very  serious  business  indeed.  The  fact  is, 
wrestling  is  an  ancient  and  honorable  calling 
in  Japan,  and  goes  back  to  the  sun  goddess. 
She  had  a  brother  once  who  used  to  annoy  her 
by  killing  wild  animals  and  tossing  them  into 
her  backyard.  One  day  she  got  angry  and  ran 
away  to  a  cave,  leaving  the  earth  in  total  dark- 
ness. Her  retainers,  and  the  brother  and  his 
retainers  tried  to  get  her  out,  but  she  refused 
to  come  out — having  blocked  the  cave  with  a 


58         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

great  stone.  So  they  performed  antics  and 
made  strange  cries  until,  tempted  by  curiosity, 
she  pushed  the  stone  slightly  away  and  looked 
out,  and  thereupon  one  Taji  Karac,  stamping 
the  earth,  rushed  forward  and  tore  the  bowlder 
away,  and  that  is  why  the  wrestlers  stamp  the 
earth  to-day.  This  is  myth — what  follows  is 
historical. 

"  Once  upon  a  time,"  said  an  American  cor- 
respondent, as  he  leaned  over  the  bar  that  night 
at  the  Imperial  Hotel,  "  a  chesty  noble  got  gay, 
and  remarked  that  he  was  about  the  best  on 
earth.  The  emperor  heard  of  this,  and  sent  a 
challenge  broadcast.  A  big  chap  took  it  up, 
kicked  in  the  chesty  noble's  ribs,  and  brake  his 
bones  so  that  he  died.  This  was  twenty-four 
years  before  celestial  peace  was  proclaimed  on 
earth.  About  nine  hundred  years  later,  two 
brothers  claimed  the  throne  and  they  agreed 
to  wrassle  for  it.  They  did  it  by  proxy, 
though,  and  one  Korishito  got  the  throne 
through  his  champion.  In  the  same  century 
there  was  a  wrestling-match  at  the  autumn  fes- 
tival of  the  Five  Grains.     The  harvest  was 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  59 

good  that  year,  and  the  emperor  argued  there- 
upon that  the  coincident  wrestling  must  be 
good,  and  so  wrestling  became  a  permanent 
national  custom.  When  the  champion  Kio- 
bashi  became  referee  the  emperor  gave  him  a 
fan  which  proclaimed  that  he  was  the  Prince 
of  Lions.  The  wrestlers  were  divided  into  east 
and  west,  and  that's  why  they  come  into  the 
arena  from  the  east  and  west  to-day.  Holly- 
hock is  the  flower  of  the  east,  the  gourd-flower  is 
symbol  of  the  west,  and  the  path  to  the  stage  is 
called  the  flower-path  to-day.  The  pillars  indi- 
cate the  points  of  the  compass.  The  next  cham- 
pion the  emperor  called  the  Driving  Wind, 
and  the  family  of  the  Driving  Wind  alone 
can  hold  the  symbol  of  the  referee  to-day." 

These  wrestlers  are  exempt  from  military 
service,  and  they  constitute,  I  understand,  a 
very  close  corporation.  When  an  unusually 
large  child  is  born  in  Japan,  the  father  and 
mother  say :  "  He  shall  be  a  wrestler." 

The  wrestlers  are  enormous  men,  and  aver- 
age over  six  feet  in  height.  Some  of  them  are 
magnificent  in  shape,  but  as  weight  counts  in  the 


60  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

science,  they  encourage  fat.  The  present  cham- 
pion weighs  over  three  hundred  pounds.  Cer- 
tainly, as  a  class,  the  wrestlers  show  what  Japan 
can  do  in  the  way  of  producing  big  men.  Con- 
stantly I  have  been  surprised  not  only  at  the 
thick-set  sturdiness,  but  at  the  average  height 
of  the  Japanese  soldier  as  I  see  him  in  Tokio 
on  his  way  to  the  front.  Moreover,  I  am  told 
that  the  height  of  Japanese  school-children  has 
increased  three  inches  within  the  last  ten  years 
in  the  schools  where  the  students  sit  in  chairs 
instead  of  squatting  on  the  floor.  And,  among 
the  new  types  one  sees  in  Tokio  to-day,  the  dap- 
per men  in  European  clothes  about  the  clubs 
and  hotels,  the  statesmen  in  high  hats  and  frock- 
suits,  the  half-modernized  class,  who  wear  derby 
hats  and  mackintoshes  with  fur  collars  and 
show  their  legs  naked  to  the  knee  when  they 
step  from  a  rickshaw — the  most  interesting  and 
significant  is  the  Tokio  University  student  you 
see  lilting  on  his  getas  through  the  public  gar- 
dens. He  has  an  intelligent  face,  looks  you 
straight  in  the  eye,  is  agile  as  a  panther,  and  as 
tall,  I  believe,  as  the  average  college  student. 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  61 

I  suppose  the  emperor  issued  an  edict  that  his 
people  should  grow  taller  and  if  he  did — they 
will.  But  these  students — one  can't  help  won- 
dering what,  when  they  grow  up,  they  will  do 
for  Japan  and  to  the  rest  of  the  East. 

With  bird-like  cries  the  rickshaw  men  turn 
under  an  arched  gateway  into  a  little  court-yard 
paved  with  stones.  The  wheels  rattle  as  in  a 
hollow  vault  and  come  to  a  sudden  halt. 
Straightway  there  is  an  answering  bustle  and 
the  shuffling  of  many  little  feet  along  the  pol- 
ished floors  to  the  entrance  of  the  tea-house,  and 
many  little  brown  maidens  kneel  there  and 
smile  and  gurgle  a  welcome.  There  the  shoes 
of  the  visitor  come  off,  and  if  any  man  has  for- 
gotten the  first  instruction  Kipling  gave,  that 
the  visitor  to  Japan  should  take  with  him  at 
least  one  beautiful  pair  of  socks,  there  is  con- 
siderable embarrassment  for  him.  You  are  led 
up  a  narrow  stairway,  each  step  of  polished 
wood,  and  into  a  big  chamber  covered  with  mats 
— the  wall  toward  the  interior  made  of  beau- 
tiful screens,  the  other  wall  opening  on  the 


62  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

outer  air  to  a  balcony.  At  the  other  end  of  the 
room  from  the  entrance  a  single  beautiful  vase 
stands  on  a  little  platform,  and  in  that  vase  is 
one  single  beautiful  flower.  In  front  of  that 
vase  is  the  seat  of  honor,  and  the  guests  are  ar- 
ranged in  front  of  it  seated  on  thin  cushions  on 
the  floor.  Straightway  little  nesan — serving- 
girls — carry  in  little  trays,  a  box  filled  with 
ashes  in  which  glow  tiny  bars  of  charcoal,  a  lit- 
tle ash-receiver  of  bamboo,  a  bottle  of  sake,  and 
dainty  little  bowls  without  handles  for  drink- 
ing-cups.  Now  one  by  one  the  brilliant  little 
stars  of  the  drama  appear.  A  geisha  girl 
glides  in  at  the  entrance,  another  and  another, 
and  in  a  row  sink  to  their  knees  and  bow  their 
foreheads  to  the  mat.  Rising,  they  approach 
ten  steps  and  kneel  again.  Once  more  they  ap- 
proach shuffling  along  the  floor  in  their  socks  of 
spotless  white  (the  big  toe  in  a  separate  pocket) 
walking  modestly  pigeon-toed  that  the  flaps  of 
their  brilliant  kimonos  may  part  not  at  all,  and 
then  they  are  bowing  in  front  of  the  little  trays 
where  they  sit  smiling  and  ready  to  serve  you 
with  food  and  drink. 


LINGERING   IN    TOKIO  63 

There  for  the  first  time  we  saw  Kamura — 
Kamura-san  you  must  say,  if  you  would  be 
polite.  She  was  pretty,  and  dainty,  and  grace- 
ful, and  her  years  were  only  fourteen,  which  by 
our  computation,  would  be  thirteen  only,  since 
the  Japanese  child  is  supposed  to  be  a  year  old 
when  born.  She  spoke  English  very  well,  for 
she  had  lived  in  Shanghai  once  where  she  had 
played  with  American  children.  She  was  an 
Eurasian — that  is  a  half-caste — but  that  was  a 
secret  which  she  told  a  few  in  confidence,  for 
you  could  not  tell  it  from  her  face,  and  the  fact 
would  be  no  little  obstacle  to  the  success  of 
her  career  as  a  geisha  girl.  Straightway  little 
Kamura-san  was  the  favorite  of  the  dinner- 
party, with  the  women  as  well  as  with  the 
men,  and  she  acted  as  interpreter  and  said 
many  quaint,  shrewd,  unexpected  things.  The 
women  petted  and  caressed  her,  and  the  men 
doubtless  would  have  liked  to  do  the  same,  but 
that  is  not  a  Japanese  custom.  She  turned  to 
one  man  of  the  party,  and  she  spoke  slowly  and 
with  no  shading  of  intonation  whatever : 

"  Who  was  the  very  young  gentleman  with 


64  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

red  cheeks  who  was  here  with  vou  the  other 
night?  " 

The  man  told  her. 

"Why?"  he  asked. 

"  He  came  back  to  see  me  alone.  He  wanted 
to  see  me  here  alone,  and  he  wanted  the  nesan 
to  leave  the  room,  but  I  would  not  let  the  nesan 
leave  the  room,  and  I  did  not  understand." 

That  innocence  aroused  considerable  interest 
in  everybody  and,  later,  the  young  gentleman's 
cheeks  got  redder  still,  when  the  incident  was 
told  him.  Three  days  later  I  went  to  the  tea- 
house again.  Kamura-san,  baby  that  she  was, 
was  to  be  sold  soon  to  a  Japanese. 


She  already  spoke  such  excellent  English  and 
was  so  very  intelligent  that  I  wondered  straight- 
way if  it  might  not  be  feasible  to  buy  little 
Kamura-san  myself  and  send  her  to  school. 
Her  mother,  I  was  told,  wanted  her  to  go  to 
school,  and  Kamura-san  said  that  was  what  she 
wanted  to  do — how  sincerely  I  was  soon  to 
learn.     That  mother  had  sold  her  several  years 


LINGERING   IN    TOKIO  65 

before  to  the  master  of  the  tea-house  and  to 
get  his  money  back  the  master  of  the  tea-house 
must  sell  her  again.  So  the  price  of  the  child, 
body  and  soul,  was  750  yen  or  $375  in  gold. 
For  $50  a  year  she  could  be  sent  to  school  in 
Tokio,  and  I  doubtless  could  find  people  to  take 
care  of  her,  though  Kamura-san  said  that  she 
would  live  with  her  mother  and  go  to  school, 
which  was  better  still.  So  I  set  about  negotia- 
tions, which  were  many  and  intricate.  I  had 
to  see  her  own  mother,  her  house-mother,  with 
whom  she  and  other  geisha  girls  lived  in  Tokio, 
and  who  made  engagements  for  her  and  them 
to  dance  at  various  tea-houses  (she  would  be  a 
female  manager  of  chorus-girls  in  this  country), 
and  I  would  have  to  see  the  master  of  the  tea- 
house. I  saw  them  all,  and  not  one  of  them  be- 
lieved that  my  purpose  was  what  I  said  it  was, 
though  all  of  them,  except  Kamura-san  herself, 
politely  pretended  to  believe.  As  Kamura-san 
had  played  with  American  children  and  knew 
English  well,  I  told  her  about  America,  and 
strove  to  explain.  She  sat  with  her  little  face 
downcast,  her  eyes  dreamy  and  apparently  tak- 


66         FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

ing  in  every  word  I  uttered.     When  I  got 
through  she  said  simply: 

"  Yess,  you  will  buy  me  out;  you  will  give 
me  a  house;  I  will  be  your  Japanese  wife 
and  wear  European  clothes."  With  her  next 
breath  she  would  be  saying  how  much  she 
wanted  to  go  to  school. 


The  mother  of  Kamura-san  lives  in  Yoko- 
hama. Soon  there  was  an  amateur  theatrical 
performance  there  and  I  got  the  mistress  of  the 
tea-house  to  let  Kamura-san  and  a  friend  go 
down  to  see  it.  In  the  afternoon  I  went  to  see 
the  mother,  who  was  young,  pretty,  and  very 
lady-like.  The  little  girl  acted  as  interpreter, 
and  from  her  mother's  lips  told  this  story: 

Kamura-san's  father  was  an  Austrian,  and 
therefore  she  was  a  half-caste.  That,  how- 
ever, was  told  me  in  confidence,  and  the  fact  I 
must  not  repeat,  since  it  would  interfere  with 
her  future.  The  mother  had  been  his  Japan- 
ese wife,  and  she  had  loved  him  very  much. 
After  a  time  the  Austrian  had  been  obliged  to 


LINGERING   IN   TOKIO  67 

go  home.  He  left  the  mother  well  provided 
for — gave  her  a  house  and  a  good  deal  of 
money.  But  she  was,  she  said,  young  and  fool- 
ish and  extravagant,  made  bad  investments, 
and  lost  it  all.  It  was  then  that  she  sold 
Kamura-san  to  the  tea-house.  She  would  be 
very  glad  to  have  the  little  girl  live  with  her 
at  home,  and  wanted  her  to  go  to  school.  Her 
father,  her  mother  said,  would  be  humiliated 
and  chagrined  if  he  knew  that  Kamura-san 
was  a  geisha,  and  she  wanted  her  daughter  to 
give  the  life  up.  Before  the  interview  was  over 
I  could  see  very  plainly  that  the  mother  was 
still  expecting  the  daughter  to  follow  in  her 
own  footsteps. 

The  three  went  to  the  amateur  theatrical 
performance  that  night,  and  from  another  part 
of  the  house  I  could  see  the  little  girl  explain- 
ing it  to  her  friend  and  to  her  mother,  and 
the  next  night  at  the  tea-house  she  rehearsed 
several  features  of  it  to  her  fellow-geishas,  and 
her  imitation  of  a  barytone  soloist,  the  way  he 
stood,  lifted  his  shoulders,  opened  his  mouth 
and  puffed  out  the  volume  of  sound,  was  very 


68         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

funny,  and  made  her  companions  squeak  with 
laughter. 

Now,  there  was  a  young  American  officer  who 
was  going  around  with  me  on  these  expeditions, 
who  was  having  considerable  fun  over  my  phil- 
anthropical  purpose,  and  was  scornfully  scep- 
tical of  any  success.  He  was  on  hand  that 
night  and  suddenly  Kamura-san  said : 

"  My  mother  says  I  must  not  love  young  and 
handsome  gentleman.'* 

"Why?"  I  asked. 

"  Because  young  and  handsome  gentleman 
changes  his  heart." 

"  Well,  I  suppose  I  fill  the  bill." 

"  Yess,"  she  said,  "  you  are  a  little  hand- 
some and  a  little  old." 

"  But  you  aren't  going  to  love  anybody,  you 
are  going  to  school." 

"  Yess,"  said  Kamura-san  obediently. 

Once  more  that  night  I  tried  to  explain  that 
we  did  not  rob  cradles  in  America,  and  again 
she  looked  dreamy  and  seemed  to  understand, 
but  when  I  started  to  go,  she  beckoned  me  be- 
hind a  screen: 


LINGERING   IN   TOKIO  69 

"  Did  you  bring  the  750  yen?  " 

It  was  the  interpreter  of  the  tea-house  that 
made  me  permanently  hopeless.  The  interpre- 
ter was  soft-voiced,  gentle,  and  spoke  excellent 
English.  She  had  lived  several  years  with  an 
American  missionary — a  woman  whom  she  had 
loved,  she  said,  very  tenderly.  The  interpreter 
had  been  a  widow  for  several  years,  and  had  a 
little  girl.  She  would  never  marry  again,  she 
said,  because  she  would  have  to  give  up  her 
child.  So  she  spoke  English  in  the  tea-house 
and  taught  the  children  of  the  master  for  a 
pitiful  salary.  I  cannot  recall  ever  having  met 
such  frankness  in  Japan,  and  this  is  what  she 
said: 

"  If  you  have  750  yen  to  spare,  give  it  to  the 
poor  families  of  Tokio  whose  sons  have  gone 
to  war.  You  buy  Kamura-san  from  the  tea- 
house and  you  go  away  to  Manchuria;  you  will 
not  know  whether  she  goes  to  school.  Most 
likely  her  house-mother  will  sell  her  again. 
Anyhow  it  is  useless.  She  really  does  not  want 
to  go  to  school.     She  likes  the  tea-house,  the 


70         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

music,  the  lights  and  gossip,  and  the  coming  and 
going  of  strangers.  You  cannot  change  her, 
and  it  is  no  use.  Give  your  money  to  poor 
people  in  Tokio." 

After  this  Kamura-san's  instincts  told  her 
that  something  was  wrong,  and  she  began  to 
take  perceptibly  more  notice  of  the  young  offi- 
cer.    Once,  as  I  was  told,  she  said  to  him : 

"  I  always  liked  you  best — ^you  are  so  pretty." 

I  charged  her  with  this  statement. 

*'Who  told  you  that?" 

"  Never  mind." 

"  He  is  a  liar,"  said  Kamura-san  calmly. 

And  once  I  caught  her  making  eyes  at  him 
behind  my  back — something  that  she  had  never 
done  with  me.     With  this,  too,  I  charged  her. 

"  No,"  she  said  in  denial,  *'  he  is  your 
brother.  He  will  be  my  best  friend.  He  will 
be  godfather  to  our  child." 

I  staggered  half-way  across  the  room — that 
infant  talking  of  a  child ! 

"  In  heaven's  good  name,"  I  said,  "  what  do 
you  want  with  a  child"?  " 


LINGERING    IN    TOKIO  71 

"  That  I  may  not  be  lonely  when  I  old," 
said  little  Kamura-san. 


Still,  out  of  curiosity  now,  I  went  to  see  the 
house-mother  of  Kamura-san.  Her  head  was 
poised  on  her  shoulders  like  a  snake's,  and  her 
eyes  were  the  eyes  of  a  snake — ^black,  beady,  and 
glittering.  A  face  more  hard,  cunning,  cruel, 
and  smilingly  crafty  I  never  saw,  and  it  took 
her  but  a  little  while  to  discover  that  I  was  an 
unsatisfactory  customer,  and  I  couldn't  help 
wondering  what  that  Austrian  father  would 
have  thought  and  felt  had  he  seen  that  snake- 
like hag  trying  to  barter  with  me  for  his  own 
flesh  and  blood.  I  left  the  young  officer  there 
and  naturally  the  house-mother  tried  to  sell  the 
child  to  him. 

Kamura-san  I  never  saw  again.  When  I 
came  back  from  Manchuria  I  heard  that  she 
was  gone — whither  I  don't  know,  but  I'm  hop- 
ing that  the  Austrian  father  by  some  chance 
may  some  day  see  these  lines. 


72  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

But  no  more  now  of  temples,  blossoms,  pict- 
ures, netsuke^  tea-houses,  wrestling-matches, 
theatres,  and  the  what-not  that  everybody  with 
a  pen  has  so  wearisomely  done  to  death.  News 
of  the  battle  of  Nanshan  has  come  in.  Next 
week  we  leave  again. 

An  explanation  has  occurred  to  me.  You 
know  the  Japanese  does  nearly  everything  but 
his  fighting — backward.  Of  course  he  reads 
and  writes  backward.  At  the  theatre  you  find 
the  dressing-room  in  the  lobby.  Keys  turn 
from  left  to  right,  boring-tools  and  screws,  I 
understand,  turn  from  right  to  left,  and  a  Jap- 
anese carpenter  draws  his  plane  toward  him 
instead  of  pushing  it  away.  Sometimes  even 
the  Japanese  thinks  and  talks  backward.  For 
instance,  suppose  he  says : 

"  I  think  I  will  go  wash  my  hands."  That, 
in  Japanese,  is: 

"  Te-wo  aratte  kimasho."  Now,  what  he 
really  has  said  is  literally: 

*'  Hands  having  washed  I  think  I  will  come 
hack.^' 

Perhaps  then  our  trouble  is  that  the  Japanese 


LINGERING   IN   TOKIO  73 

tells  the  truth  backward  and  we  can't  under- 
stand. He  might  even  be  fighting  that  way — 
say,  for  an  alliance  with  Russia — and  we  still 
should  not  understand — at  least,  not  yet. 


IV 
MAKING  FOR  MANCHURIA 

It  came  at  last — that  order  for  the  front. 
On  the  i8th  day  of  July,  the  Empress  of  China 
swung  out  of  Yokohama  Harbor,  with  eighteen 
men  on  board,  who  had  been  waiting  four 
months  for  that  order,  almost  to  the  very  day. 
During  those  four  months  there  was  hardly  a 
day  that  some  one  of  those  men  was  not  led 
to  believe  by  the  authorities  in  Tokio  that  in 
the  next  ten  days  the  order  would  come,  and 
never  would  the  authorities  say  that  during  any 
ten  days  the  order  would  not  come;  so  that 
they  had  perforce  to  stay  waiting  in  Tokio 
from  the  freezing  rains  of  March  until  the 
sweltering  days  of  midsummer.  Many  of 
those  men  had  been  in  Japan  for  five  months 
and  more,  and  yet  knew  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  land  save  of  Tokio  and  Yokohama, 

which,  tourists  tell  me,  are  not  Japan  at  all. 

74 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  75 

The  matter  has  been  passing  strange.  We 
did  not  come  over  here  at  the  invitation  of  the 
Japanese  Government,  but  in  simple  kindness 
the  authorities  might  have  said,  with  justice: 

"  This  is  the  business  of  Japan  and  of  Rus- 
sia alone.  Over  here  we  do  not  recognize  the 
Occidental  God-given  right  of  the  newspapers 
to  divulge  the  private  purposes  of  anybody. 
We  believe  that  War  Correspondents  are 
harmful  to  the  proper  conduct  of  a  war. 
Frankly,  we  don't  want  you,  and  to  the  front 
you  can  never  go." 

No  just  complaint  could  have  been  made  to 
this.  We  should  have  seen  beautiful  Japan 
and,  our  occupation  gone  for  this  war,  at  least, 
we  could  have  struck  the  backward  trail  of  the 
Saxon — the  correspondent  for  some  trade  of 
peace,  the  artist  to  "  drawing  fruits  and  flow- 
ers at  home."    And  all  would  have  been  well. 

Or: 

"  You  gentlemen  came  over  here  at  your  own 
risk.  You  create  a  new  and  serious  problem 
for  us  and  we  don't  know  how  we  are  going  to 
solve  it.    If  you  wish  to  stay  on  at  your  own 


76  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN^FLAG 

risk  until  we  have  made  up  our  minds — ^you 
are  quite  welcome." 

For  some  this  would  have  made  an  early 
homeward  flight  easy.    Or  again : 

"  Yes,  we  do  mean  to  let  you  go  to  the  front, 
but  when  we  cannot  say.  While  you  are  here, 
however,  we  shall  be  glad  to  have  you  see  our 
country.  Just  now  we  are  quite  sure  that  you 
will  not  go  for  at  least  ten  days:  so  you  can 
travel  around  and  come  back.  If  we  are  sure 
that  you  can't  go  for  another  ten  days,  you 
may  go  away  again  and  come  back — and  so  on 
until  you  do  leave." 

Even  this  they  might  have  said: 

"  You  English  are  our  allies.  We  are  in 
trouble,  and  we  may  draw  you  as  allies  into  it. 
We,  therefore,  grant  your  right  to  know  how 
we  behave  on  the  battle-field,  where  we  may 
possibly  have  to  fight,  shoulder  to  shoulder. 
Therefore,  you  English  correspondents,  you 
English  attaches,  can  go  to  the  front,  the  rest 
of  you  cannot." 

Nothing  in  all  this  could  have  given  offence. 
All  or  any  of  it  would  have  had  at  least  the 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  77 

combined  merits  of  frankness,  consideration, 
honesty,  and  it  is  very  hard  for  this  Saxon  to 
understand  how  any  or  all  could  possibly  have 
any  bearing  on  anybody's  advantage  or  disad- 
vantage, as  far  as  this  war  is  concerned. 

The  Japanese  gave  no  open  hint  of  unwill- 
ingness to  have  us  go — no  hint  that  we  were 
not  to  go  very  soon.  We  were  urged  to  get 
passes  for  ourselves,  interpreters  and  servants 
at  once.  Most  of  the  men  obeyed  at  once, 
bought  horses,  outfits,  provisions  and  wrote 
farewell  letters — wrote  them  many  times.  This 
was  the  middle  of  March.  Ever  since  we  have 
stayed  at  the  Imperial  Tomb  in  Tokio — the 
Imperial  Hotel  is  the  name  it  calls  itself — un- 
der heavy  expense  to  ourselves  here  and  to  the 
dear  ones  at  home  who  sent  us  here;  unable 
to  go  away;  told  every  ten  days  that  in  the 
next  ten  days  we  would  most  likely  go,  and 
told  on  no  day  that  within  the  next  ten  we 
should  not  go.  Now  it  was  soon — "  very 
soon  " — in  English,  and  then  it  was  "  tadai- 
ma  " — in  Japanese. 

Tadaimal    That,  too,  meant  "soon,"  when 


78  FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

I  first  put  stumbling  feet  on  the  tortuous  path 
of  Japanese  thought  and  speech.  The  unwary 
stranger  will  be  told  to-day  that  it  does  mean 
"  soon,"  and  as  such  in  dictionaries  he  shall 
find  it.  But  I  have  tracked  "  tadaima  "  to  its 
lair  and  dragged  it,  naked  and  ashamed,  into 
the  white  light  of  truth.  And  I  know  *'  tadai- 
ma "  at  any  time  refers  only  to  the  season 
next  to  come.  Early  in  March,  for  instance, 
it  means  literally — "  next  summer  about  two 
o'clock." 

All  this  was  something  of  a  strain  in  the 
way  of  expectation,  disappointment,  worry, 
wasted  energy — idleness.  And  so  with  a  wor- 
ried conscience  over  the  expense  to  the  above- 
mentioned  dear  ones  at  home,  and  the  hope 
that  some  return  might  yet  be  made  to  them; 
through  a  good  deal  of  weakness  and  a  good 
deal  of  reluctance  to  go  home  and  get  "  guyed," 
we  stayed  on  and  on.  In  May  came  the  battle 
of  Nanshan  and  the  advance  on  Port  Arthur. 
In  June  followed  Tehlitzu.  Both  battles  any 
man  would  have  gladly  risked  his  life  to  see, 
and  I  really  think  it  would  have  been  well  for 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  79 

the  Japanese,  granting  their  accounts  of  the 
two  battles  as  accurate — Russian  atrocities  in 
one,  undoubted  Japanese  gallantry  in  both — 
if  impartial  observers  had  been  there  to  con- 
firm. As  it  stands,  the  Japanese  say  "you 
did  " — the  Russians  say  "  we  didn't " — and 
there  the  matter  will  end. 

But  we  swung  out  of  Yokohama  Harbor  at 
last — the  Tokio  slate  for  the  time  wiped  clean 
and  all  forgiven.  We  were  going  to  the  front 
and  that  was  balm  to  any  wound.  O-kin-san 
of  the  Tea  House  of  the  Hundred  Steps — bless 
her! — had  me  turn  my  back  while  she  struck 
sparks  with  flint  and  steel  behind  me  and  made 
prayers  for  my  safety,  and  from  her  kind  hand 
I  carried  away  a  little  ideographed  block  of 
wood  in  a  wicker  case  which  would  preserve 
me  from  all  bodily  harm.  Whither  we  were 
bound  we  knew  not  for  sure,  since  by  the  same 
token  you  know  nothing  in  this  land  for  sure. 
But  there  were  three  men  among  us  who  had 
been  guaranteed,  they  said,  by  the  word  of  a 
Major-General's  mouth,  that  they  should  see 
the  fall  of  Port  Arthur.     So  sure  were  they 


80         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

that  they  had  made  less  important  representa- 
tives of  their  papers  stay  behind  in  Tokio  to 
await  the  going  of  the  third  column.  Two 
others  had  got  the  same  assurance  indirectly, 
but  from  high  authority,  and  the  rest  of  us 
knew  that  where  they  went,  there  went  we. 

That  day  and  that  night  and  next  day  we 
had  quiet  seas  and  sunlight.  The  second  night 
we  were  dining  in  Kobbe  at  a  hotel  to  which 
Kipling  once  sang  a  just  psean  of  praise — 
Kobbe,  which  he  knew  at  once,  he  said,  was 
Portland,  Maine,  though  his  feet  had  not  then 
touched  American  soil.  He  was  quite  right. 
Kobbe  might  be  any  town  anywhere.  The 
next  daybreak  was  of  shattered  silver,  and  it 
found  us  sailing  through  a  still  sea  of  silver 
from  which  volcanic  islands  leaped  everywhere 
toward  a  silver  sky.  We  were  in  the  Inland 
Sea.  To  the  eye,  it  was  an  opal  dream — that 
Inland  Sea — and  the  memory  of  it  now  is  the 
memory  of  a  dream — a  dream  of  magic  waters, 
silvery  light  and  forlorn  islands — bleak  and 
many-peaked  above,  and  slashed  with  gloomy 
ravines  that  race  each  other  down  to  goblin- 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  81 

haunted  water-caves,  where  the  voice  of  the 
sea  is  never  still.  This  sea  narrowed  by  and 
by  into  the  Shimonoseki  Straits,  which  turn 
and  twist  through  rocks,  islands,  and  high  green 
hills.  Through  them  we  went  into  the  open 
ocean  once  more.  In  the  middle  of  the  next 
afternoon  we  passed  for  a  while  through  other 
mountain-bordered  straits,  and  by  and  by  there 
sat  before  the  uplifted  eye  Nagasaki,  with  its 
sleepy  green  terraces,  rising  from  water-level 
to  low  mountain-top — where  the  Madame 
Chrysantheme  of  Loti's  fiction  is  a  living  fact 
to-day.  Who  was  it  that  said,  after  reading 
that  book,  he  or  she  would  like  to  read  Pierre 
Loti  by  Madame  Chrysantheme*?  It  must  have 
been  a  woman — and  justly  a  woman — sure. 
There  is  an  English  colony  at  Nagasaki  and  an 
American  or  two  who  cling  together  and  talk 
about  going  home  some  day — all  exiles,  all 
most  hospitable  to  the  stranger,  and  all  uncon- 
sciously touched  with  the  pathos  of  the  exile 
wherever  on  earth  you  find  him. 

Between  four  and  five  o'clock  these  exiles 
take  launches  for  a  beach  five  miles  away,  since 


82  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

the  Japanese  regulations  now  forbid  bathing  at 
any  nearer  point.  They  carry  out  cakes  and  tea 
and  other  things  to  drink  and  I  took  one  trip 
with  them  through  one  beautifully  radiant  late 
afternoon,  but  even  in  that  way  there  was  no 
evading  the  Japanese.  Two  of  them,  whether 
fishermen,  sailors,  officers,  or  what  not,  calmly 
fixed  their  boat-hooks  to  the  launch  and  there 
they  hung.  The  fact  that  the  ladies  of  the 
launch  were  undressing  and  dressing  in  one  end 
did  not  seem  to  disturb  them  at  all,  and  to  this 
day  I  am  wondering  what  possible  harm  a  man 
or  a  woman  in  a  bathing-dress  among  waves 
can  do  in  time  of  war  in  a  place  that  is  im- 
pregnable and  five  hundred  miles  from  the 
firing-line.  I  found  the  Japanese  as  different 
in  Nagasaki  as  is  their  speech.  There  they  say 
"  Nagasaki "  with  a  hard  g.  In  Tokio,  where 
the  classics  are  supreme,  they  pronounce  it 
"  Nangasaki,"  almost — just  as  the  rickshaw 
men  in  the  one  place  lose  something  of  the 
samurai  haughtiness  that  characterizes  them  in 
the  other.  It  is  the  difference  between  the  flat 
and  the  broad  "  a  "  in  our  own  land,  and  be- 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  83 

tween  the  people  who  use  the  one  and  the  peo- 
ple who  use  the  other.  Everybody  left  next 
morning,  but  I  clung  to  Nagasaki  as  long  as 
I  could,  and  in  consequence  took  an  all-night 
ride  on  a  wooden  seat.  Early  next  morning 
I  was  crossing  the  Shimonoseki  Straits  from 
Moji  in  a  sampan.  It  was  before  sunrise.  The 
mist  on  the  sea  was  still  asleep,  but  on  the 
mountains  it  was  starting  its  upward  flight. 
Through  it  fishing-boats  were  slipping  like 
ghosts,  and  here  and  there  the  dim  shape  of  a 
transport  or  a  little  torpedo-boat  was  visible. 
The  flush  in  the  East  was  hardly  as  deep  as  a 
pale  rose  before  I  was  noiselessly  oared  to  the 
stone  quay  of  the  little  village  whence  we  were 
to  take  transport  at  last  for  the  front.  The 
foreign  hotel  was  full.  Richard  Harding 
Davis  had  gone  to  a  Japanese  hotel  and  had 
left  word  for  me  to  follow.  So  in  a  rickety 
rickshaw  I  rattled  after  him  through  the  empty 
street.  I  found  him  in  a  Japanese  room  as 
big  as  the  dining-room  of  an  American  hotel, 
covered  with  eighty  mats,  full  of  magic  wood- 
work, and  looking  out  where  there  were  no 


84  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

walls  (the  walls  in  a  Japanese  house  are  taken 
out  by  day)  for  full  fifty  feet  on  mountain 
and  sea  and  passing  transports  and  sampans. 
Davis  was  unpacking.  Hanging  over  the  bal- 
cony was  a  yellow  moth  of  a  girl  some  four- 
teen years  old,  who  smiled  me  welcome.  On 
another  balcony  at  the  other  end  of  the  hotel, 
three  other  sister  moths  were  lighted,  and 
among  them  I  saw  a  correspondent  beating 
a  typewriter  vigorously — they  watching  him 
with  amazement  and  brushing  him  with  their 
wing-like  sleeves  as  they  hovered  about. 
Others  still  were  fluttering  fairy-like  anywhere, 
everywhere.  The  latest  occupant  of  our  room 
had  been  the  Marquis  Ito — we  found  it  quite 
big  enough  for  two  of  us.  Li  Hung  Chang 
had  the  same  room  when  he  came  over  to  make 
peace  terms  after  the  Japanese-Chinese  War. 
We  could  see  the  corner  of  the  street  near  by 
where  a  Japanese  tried  then  to  assassinate  that 
eminent  Chinaman,  and  in  that  very  room  the 
great  Shimonoseki  treaty  was  signed.  We  had 
it  two  nights  and  a  day,  and  we  learned,  when 
we  went  away,  that  we  were  not  told  the  his- 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  85 

tory  of  that  room  for  nothing.  First,  our  in- 
terpreters hinted  that  great  men  like  Ito  and 
Li  Hung  Chang  and  Our  Honorable  Selves 
were  always  expected  to  make  a  present  to  the 
hotel.  It  was  the  custom.  We  followed  the 
custom  to  the  extent  of  ten  yen  each,  and  an 
old  lady  came  in  and  prostrated  herself  before 
each  of  us  in  turn.  Now,  when  you  are  clothed 
only  in  pajamas,  are  seated  in  a  chair,  and  have 
your  bare  feet  on  a  balcony  in  order  to  miss 
no  vagrant  wind,  it  is  somewhat  embarrassing 
to  have  a  woman  steal  in  without  warning, 
smite  her  forehead  to  the  mat  several  times, 
and  make  many  signs  and  much  speech  of  grati- 
tude. You  won't  smite  yours  in  turn;  you 
can't  bow  as  you  sit,  and  if  you  rise,  it  looks 
as  though  you  were  going  to  put  foot  on  the 
neck  of  a  slave.  We  looked  very  red  and  felt 
very  foolish,  but  we  did  not  exchange  confi- 
dences. If  there  was  any  slumbering  supposi- 
tion in  our  minds  that  this  was  a  polite  Orien- 
tal method  of  dealing  with  guests  who  have 
doubtful  luggage,  or  a  slumbering  hope  that  the 
"  present "  might  have  a  dwindling  effect  on 


86  FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

our  bill,  there  needn't  have  been.  We  had  to 
pay  in  addition  for  that  room  and  those  eighty 
mats  and  that  Fuji  landscape  of  delicate  wood- 
work; we  had  to  pay  for  all  the  brilliant  moths 
that  fluttered  incessantly  about,  for  the  cham- 
ber-maids and  the  smiling  bronze  scullery-girl 
who  looked  in  on  us  from  the  hallway ;  for  the 
bath-boy  and  the  cook  or  cooks.  Every  junk 
and  sampan  that  passed  had  apparently  sent  a 
toll  for  collection  to  that  hotel.  The  gold  of 
the  one  sunset  and  the  silver  of  the  one  dawn 
were  included  in  the  turkey-tracked,  serpent- 
long  bill  that  was  unrolled  before  our  wonder- 
ing eyes.  In  fact,  if  Marquis  Ito's  breakfast 
and  the  biggest  dinner  that  Li  Hung  Chang 
had  there  nine  years  before  were  not  put  down 
therein,  it  was  a  strange  oversight  on  the  part 
of  the  all-seeing  eye  that  had  swept  the  horizon 
of  all  creation  during  the  itemization  of  that 
bill.  That  was  business — that  bill.  The  pres- 
ent had  been  custom.  I  cheerfully  recommend 
the  method  to  highway  robbers  that  captain 
other  palaces  of  extortion  in  other  parts  of  the 
world.    Get  the  present  first — it's  a  pretty  cus- 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  87 

torn — and  the  rest  is  just  as  easy  as  it  would 
have  been  anyway. 

Next  day  we  went  back  again  to  Moji,  where 
a  polite  and  dapper  little  officer  examined  us 
and  our  passes  and  asked  us  many  questions. 
Why  he  did  I  know  not,  since  he  seemed  to 
know  about  us  in  advance,  and  every  now  and 
then  he  would  look  up  from  a  pass  and  say: 
"  Oh,  you  are  so-and-so  " — whereat  "  so-and- 
so  "  would  look  a  bit  uneasy.  At  two  o'clock 
that  day  we  set  sail — correspondents,  interpret- 
ers, servants,  horses,  a  few  soldiers,  and  much 
ammunition — on  the  transport  Heijo  Maru. 
Every  ship  has  that  "  Maru  "  after  its  name, 
and  I  have  never  been  able  to  find  out  just 
what  it  means — except  that  literally  it  is 
"  round  in  shape."  We  steamed  slowly  past 
a  long,  bleak,  hump-backed  little  island  that 
had  been  the  funeral  pyre  for  the  Japanese 
dead  in  the  war  with  China.  For  ordinarily 
the  Japanese,  after  taking  a  lock  of  hair,  a 
finger-nail,  or  the  inkobo  (a  bone  in  the  throat), 
which  they  send  back  to  relatives,  burn  their 
dead.    But  this  funeral  pyre  was  for  those  who 


88  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

died  in  the  hospital,  and  the  wounded  and  sick 
therein  could  see  by  the  flames  at  night  where 
next  day  their  own  ashes  might  lie.  Thence 
we  turned  northward  toward  the  goal  of  five 
months'  hope  on  the  part  of  those  hitherto  un- 
happy but  now  most  cheerful  eighteen  men. 

Fuji  was  on  board.  Fuji  is  my  horse,  and 
he  had  come  down  by  rail.  He  is  Japanese 
and  a  stallion — as  most  Japanese  horses  are. 
He  has  a  bushy,  wayward  mane,  by  the  strands 
of  which  you  can  box  the  compass  with  great 
accuracy,  and  a  bushy  forelock  that  is  just  as 
wayward.  His  head,  physiognomy,  and  general 
traits  will  come  in  better  when  later  they  get 
an  opportunity  for  display.  All  I  knew  then 
of  Fuji  was  that  he  had  nearly  pulled  the  arms 
out  of  the  sockets  of  several  men,  and  had 
broken  one  man's  leg  back  in  Tokio.  I  was 
soon  to  learn  that  this  was  very  little  to  know 
about  Fuji. 

Takeuchi  also  was  aboard.  Takeuchi  is  my 
interpreter  and  servant.  He  is  tall  and  slender, 
and  has  a  narrow,  intelligent  face  and  general 
proportions  that  an  American  girl  character- 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  89 

ized  as  Greek.  I  call  him  the  ever-faithful  or 
the  ever-faithless — just  as  his  mood  for  the  day 
happens  to  be.  He  keeps  me  guessing  all  the 
time.  When  I  make  up  my  mind  that  I  am 
going  to  say  harsh  things  next  day,  I  find  Ta- 
keuchi  tucking  a  blanket  around  me  at  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning.  He  knows  they  are 
coming,  and  when  I  do  say  them  Takeuchi 
answers,  "  I  beg  you  my  pardon,"  in  a  way 
that  leads  me  to  doubt  which  of  us  is  the  real 
offender  after  all.  Sometimes  my  watch  and 
money  disappear,  but  Takeuchi  turns  up  with 
them  the  next  morning,  shaking  his  head  and 
with  one  wave  of  his  hand  toward  the  table. 

"  Not  safe,"  he  says,  smiting  his  waistband, 
where  both  were  concealed.  "  I  keep  him." 
He  has  both  now  all  the  time.  His  first  ac- 
count overran,  to  be  sure,  the  exact  amount 
of  his  salary  for  one  month  and  for  that  amount 
I  had  him  sign  a  receipt.  Two  hours  later  he 
said,  in  perplexity: 

"I  do  not  understand  the  receipt  I  give 
you." 

I  pointed  out  my  willingness  to  be  proven 


90         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

wrong.  He  worked  for  an  hour  on  the  account 
and  sighed: 

"  You  are  right,"  he  said.  "  I  mistake.  I 
beg  you  my  pardon." 

He  had  overlooked  among  other  things  one 
item — the  funeral  expenses  of  some  relative, 
which  he  had  charged  to  me.  I  made  it  clear 
that  such  an  item  was  hardly  legitimate  and 
since  then  we  have  had  less  trouble.  However, 
when  he  wishes  anything,  he  says : 

"  I  want  you,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,"  and  at  the  end 
of  the  sentence  he  will  say  "  please,"  with  great 
humility ;  but  until  that  "  please  "  comes  I  am 
not  always  sure  which  is  servant  and  which  is 
master.  From  Takeuchi  I  have  learned  much 
about  Japanese  character,  especially  about  the 
Buschido  spirit — the  fealty  of  Samurai  to  Dai- 
mio,  of  retainer  to  Samurai,  of  servant  to  mas- 
ter. It  is  useless  to  be  harsh  with  or  to  scold 
a  Japanese  servant.  Just  make  your  appeal 
to  that  traditional  spirit  of  loyalty  and  all  will 
be  better — if  not  well.  He  may  rob  you  him- 
self in  the  way  of  traditional  commissions,  but 
you  can  be  sure  that  he  will  allow  the  same 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  91 

privilege  to  nobody  else.  But  of  Takeuchi — 
as  of  Fuji — more  anon. 

We  sailed  along  at  slow  speed  until  we  came 
to  the  Elliott  Group  of  Islands.  We  paid  a 
yen  apiece  for  each  meal,  and  the  captain  and 
the  purser — a  nice  little  fellow  who  got  auto- 
graphs from  all  who  could  write  and  pictures 
from  all  who  could  draw — were  the  only  offi- 
cers with  whom  we  came  in  contact.  We  had 
poker  o'  nights,  and  sometimes  o'  days,  and 
now  and  then  we  "  played  the  horses."  Thus 
we  reached  the  Elliott  Group  of  Islands. 

There  we  had  company,  transports  coming 
in  until  there  was  a  fleet  of  ten;  other  trans- 
ports going  back  to  Japan,  and  an  occasional 
gun-boat  hovering  on  the  horizon.  There  we 
stayed  three  wearing  days — told  each  day  that 
we  should  start  on  the  next  at  daybreak.  But 
there  came  one  matchless  sunset  as  a  comfort 
— a  sunset  that  hung  for  a  while  over  a  low 
jagged  coast — a  seething  mass  of  flaming  gold 
and  vivid,  quivering  green;  that  smote  the  sea 
into  sympathy,  lent  its  colors  to  the  mists  that 
rose  therefrom,  and  sank  slowly  to  one  lumi- 


92  FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

nous  band  of  yellow,  above  which  one  motion- 
less cloud  of  silver  was,  by  some  miracle,  the 
last  to  deepen  into  ashes  and  darkness.  And 
as  it  darkened  in  the  West,  some  white  clouds 
in  the  East  pushed  tumbling  crests  of  foam 
over  another  range  of  hills,  and  above  them  the 
full  moon  soared.  Thus,  all  my  life  I  had 
waited  to  see  at  last,  on  a  heathen  coast,  Tur- 
ner doing  the  sunset,  while  Whistler  was  ar- 
ranging colors  in  the  place  where  the  next  dawn 
was  to  come. 

Here  we  saw  Chinamen  for  the  first  time  on 
native  heath.  They  came  out  to  us  in  sam- 
pans, always  with  one  or  two  children  in  the 
bow,  to  get  scraps  to  eat  at  the  port-holes  aft, 
or  empty  bottles,  which  they  much  prized;  or 
drifted  past  us  on  the  swift  tide,  watching  like 
birds  of  prey  for  anything  that  might  be  thrown 
overboard.  And  we  saw  the  attitude  of  Jap- 
anese toward  Chinamen  for  the  first  time,  as 
well,  and  all  the  time  one  memory,  incongru- 
ous and  unjust  though  it  was,  hung  in  my 
mind — the  memory  of  a  town-bred  mulatto  in 
a  high  hat  with  his  thumbs  in  the  arm-holes  of 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  93 

a  white  waistcoat,  and  loftily  talking  to  a  coun- 
try brother  of  deeper  shade  in  the  market-place 
of  a  certain  Southern  town.  One  day  a  sampan, 
with  a  very  old  man  and  a  young  one  aboard, 
made  fast  to  the  gangway.  They  had  fish  to 
sell,  and  during  the  haggling  that  followed,  a 
Japanese  sprang  aboard,  dropped  a  coin  or  two, 
picked  up  the  fish,  and  tried  to  cast  the  sampan 
away — the  Chinamen  sputtering  voluble  but 
feeble  protests  meanwhile.  In  the  confusion, 
the  stern  of  the  sampan  struck  a  ship's  boat  that 
was  swinging  on  a  long  hawser  from  the  same 
gangway,  the  bow  of  it  struck  the  ship's  side, 
and  the  racing  tide  did  the  rest.  The  boat  was 
overturned,  old  man  and  young  one  disap- 
peared and  all  under  water  shot  away.  We 
thought  they  were  gone,  but  there  were  two 
lean,  yellow  arms  fastened  by  yellow  talons  to 
the  keel,  and  in  a  moment  the  young  man  was 
dragging  the  old  man  to  safety  on  the  bottom 
of  the  boat.  The  ship's  boat  was  cast  away, 
the  Japanese  who  had  caused  the  trouble 
sprang  aboard  with  the  crew,  gave  chase  to 
the  bobbing  wreck,  caught  it  several  hundred 


94         FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

yards  away,  righted  it,  and  later  we  saw  the 
young  Chinaman  working  it,  half  submerged, 
toward  the  distant  shore,  and  the  shivering,  be- 
draggled old  one  being  brought  back  to  the 
ship.  We  were  all  indignant,  for  the  officers 
of  the  ship,  far  from  interfering,  laughed  dur- 
ing the  whole  affair,  and,  laughing,  watched  the 
old  man  and  the  young  one  sweep  away.  But 
no  sooner  was  the  old  man  aboard  than  the 
servants  and  interpreters  gave  him  rice,  saki, 
empty  bottles,  and  clothes,  and  took  up  a  sub- 
scription for  him ;  and  when  the  young  one  got 
to  the  ship  an  hour  later  the  old  man  climbed 
into  the  sampan,  mellow  and  happy.  It  seemed 
a  heartless  piece  of  cruelty  at  first,  but  it  was 
perhaps,  after  all,  only  the  cruelty  of  children, 
for  which  they  were  at  once  sorry  and  at  once 
tried  to  make  amends.  To  me,  its  significance 
was  in  the  loftily  superior,  contemptuously  pat- 
ronizing attitude  of  the  Japanese  toward  the 
yellow  brother  from  whom  he  got  civilization, 
art,  classical  models,  and  a  written  speech. 
Later,  I  found  the  same  bearing  raised  to  the 
ninth  degree  in  Manchuria.    Knowing  the  gro- 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  95 

tesque  results  in  the  efforts  of  one  imitative 
race  to  adopt  another  civilization  in  my  own 
country,  the  parallelism  has  struck  me  forcibly . 
over  here  in  dress,  Occidental  manners,  the  love 
of  interpreters  for  ponderous  phraseology  and 
quotations,  rigid  insistence  on  form  and  red 
tape  and  the  letter  thereof.  Give  a  Japanese 
a  rule  and  he  knows  no  exception  on  his  part, 
understands  no  variation  therefrom  on  yours. 
For  instance,  every  afternoon  we  went  into  the 
sea  from  that  gangway,  and  Guy  Scull  diving 
from  the  railing  of  the  upper  deck  and  Richard 
Harding  Davis  diving  for  coins  thrown  from 
the  same  deck  into  the  water  (and  getting  them, 
too)  created  no  little  diversion  for  everybody 
on  board.  On  the  third  afternoon,  Davis,  in 
his  kimono  and  nothing  else,  was  halted  by  the 
first  officer  at  the  gangway.  The  captain  had 
found  a  transport  rule  to  the  effect  that  no- 
body should  be  allowed  to  go  in  bathing — the 
good  reason  being,  of  course,  that  some  of  sev- 
eral hundred  soldiers  in  bathing  might  drown. 
Therefore,  we  eighteen  men,  though  we  were 
in  a  way  the  guests  of  the  captain's  Govern- 


96         FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

merit — in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  were  paying 
for  our  own  meals — and  though  for  this  reason 
a  distinction  might  have  been  made,  the  rule 
was  there,  and,  like  Japanese  soldiers,  we  had 
to  obey.    It  looked  a  trifle  ominous. 

We  were  only  ten  hours'  sail  now  from  Port 
Arthur,  and  one  morning  we  did  get  away  just 
before  sunrise.  The  start  was  mysterious,  al- 
most majestic  at  that  hour.  For  three  days 
those  transports  had  lain  around  us — filled,  I 
was  told,  with  soldiers,  and  yet  not  one  soldier 
had  I  seen.  Blacker  and  more  mysterious  than 
ever  they  looked  in  that  dark  hour  before  dawn 
— only  the  first  flush  in  the  east  showing  sign 
of  something  human  in  the  column  of  black 
smoke  that  was  drifting  from  the  funnel  of 
each.  It  showed,  too,  a  gray  mass  lying  low 
on  the  water,  and  near  a  big  black  rock  that 
jutted  from  the  sea.  That  gray  mass  gave 
forth  one  unearthly  shriek  and  that  was  all. 
Instantly  thereafterward  it  floated  slowly 
around  that  jutting  rock;  one  by  one  the  silent 
black  ships  moved  ghostlike  after  it,  and  when 
the  red  sunburst  came,  that  gave  birth,  I  sup- 


MAKING   FOR   MANCHURIA  97 

pose,  to  the  flag  of  Japan,  all  in  single  file  were 
moving  in  a  great  circle  out  to  sea — the  prow 
of  each  ship  turning  toward  one  red  star  that 
l(/oked  down  with  impartial  eyes  where  the 
brown  children  of  the  sun  were  in  a  death- 
struggle  with  the  cubs  of  the  Great  White 
Bear.  By  noon  there  was  great  cheer.  The 
Japanese  word  was  good  at  last — we  were 
bound  for  Port  Arthur.  The  rocky  shore  of 
Manchuria  was  close  at  hand.  A  Japanese  tor- 
pedo-boat slipped  by,  its  nose  plunging  through 
every  wave  and  playful  as  a  dolphin,  tossing 
green  water  and  white  foam  back  over  its  whole 
black  length.  A  signal-station  became  visible 
on  one  gray  peak,  and  then  there  was  a  thrill 
that  took  the  soreness  of  five  months  from  the 
hearts  of  eighteen  men.  The  sullen  thunder  of 
a  big  gun  moaned  its  way  to  us  from  Port  Ar- 
thur. There  was  not  a  man  who  had  not  long 
dreamed  of  that  grim  easternmost  symbol  of 
Russian  aggression,  and  each  man  knew  that 
no  matter  what  might  happen  on  land.  Port 
Arthur  held  place  and  would  hold  place  for 
dramatic  interest  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.    Port 


98  FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

Arthur  we  should  see — stubborn  siege  and 
fierce  assaults — and  gather  stories  by  the  hand- 
ful when  it  fell.  Dalny  was  to  our  left,  and 
it  was  rather  curious  that  we  did  not  turn 
toward  Dalny.  But  no  matter — we  were  going 
into  Talienwan  Bay,  which  was  only  a  few 
miles  farther  away,  and  we  could  hear  big 
guns:  so  we  were  happy.  Talienwan — a  thin 
curve  of  low  gray  stone  buildings,  hugging  the 
sweep  of  the  bay,  spread  the  welcome  that  the 
officer  of  that  port  came  to  speak  in  English — 
and  we  landed  among  carts,  Chinese  coolies, 
Japanese  soldiers,  Chinese  wagons,  mules,  don- 
keys, horses,  ponies,  squealing  stallions,  am- 
munition, a  medley  of  human  cries.  The  bustle 
was  terrific.  A  man  must  look  out  for  him- 
self in  that  apparent  confusion.  As  it  was  an 
ever-faithful  day  for  Takeuchi  that  day,  I  was 
serene  and  trustful.  Davis  was  not,  and  beck- 
oned to  a  coolie  with  a  cart.  The  man  came 
and  Davis's  baggage  was  piled  on  the  cart. 
Along  came  a  Japanese  officer  who,  without  a 
word,  threw  the  baggage  to  the  ground — in- 
cluding a  camera  and  other  things  as  fragile 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  99 

and  hardly  less  precious.  Davis  turned  to  the 
Post  Officer: 

"  Can  I  have  one  of  these  carts?  " 

"  Certainly,"  he  said. 

Davis  got  another,  but  while  his  interpreter 
was  loading  his  things  again,  the  same  officer 
came  by  and  tossed  them  again  to  the  ground. 
The  interpreter  protested  and  tried  to  explain 
that  he  had  permission  to  use  the  carts,  but  he 
hadn't  time.  That  officer  turned  on  him.  Now 
I  had  been  told  that  there  are  no  oaths  and  vile 
epithets  in  the  Japanese  tongue,  but  I  know  no 
English  vile  enough  to  report  what  the  man 
said,  and  if  I  did  I  couldn't  use  it  without 
blistering  my  tongue  and  blackening  my  soul 
more  black  than  the  hair  of  the  blackguard  who 
used  it.  But  let  me  do  the  Colonel  in  com- 
mand justice  to  say  that  when  the  outraged 
interpreter,  taken  to  him  by  us  afterward,  re- 
peated the  insult,  the  courteous  old  gentleman 
looked  shocked  and  deeply  hurt,  and  said  he 
would  deal  harshly  with  the  man.  I  hope  he 
did. 

This  was  ominous,  but  we  were  still  cheerful. 


100       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

Yokoyama  appeared  and  Yokoyama  was  omi- 
nous. He  was  to  handle  our  canteen  and  charge 
us  twice  the  prices  that  we  had  known  at  the 
Imperial  Hotel,  on  the  ground  that  he  would 
transport  our  baggage  for  us.  That  meant  that 
he  was  to  charge  us  for  the  transport  service 
that  the  Government  was  to  give  us — not  to 
him — and  furnish  us  chiefly  with  canned  stuff 
that  each  man  could  have  bought  for  himself 
for  a  dollar  per  day.  We  did  not  know  this 
just  then,  but  wily  Yokoyama  had  gathered 
in  500  yen  from  each  of  us  in  Tokio,  and 
he  was  ominous  before  we  left  Japan.  I  am 
putting  this  in  because  Yokoyama,  too,  is 
woven  into  the  network  that  fate  was  casting 
about  us  that  day.  Still  we  were  cheerful. 
Cannon  were  making  the  music  we  had  waited 
five  months  to  hear.  Port  Arthur  would  fall, 
doubtless,  within  ten  days,  and  then — Home! 
The  dream  was  shattered  before  we  went  to 
sleep.  No  officer  came  to  tell  us  where  we  were 
bound — to  explain  the  shattered  word  of  a 
Major-General  of  his  own  army.  It  was  Yoko- 
yama who  dealt  the  blow — Yokoyama  who,  in 


MAKING    FOR    MANCHURIA  101 

another  land,  would  have  been  branded  as  a 
traitor  by  his  own  people  and  could  have  been, 
put  behind  the  bars  in  ours.  The  truth  was 
that  we  were  not  to  go  to  Port  Arthur  at  all. 
Next  day  we  travelled — whither  God  only 
knew — with  every  boom  of  a  big  gun  at  the 
Russian  fortress  behind  us  sounding  the  knell 
of  a  hope  in  the  heart  of  each  and  every  man. 
But  we  were  on  the  trail  of  Oku's  army  into  the 
heart  of  Manchuria,  though  nobody  knew  it  for 
sure,  and  there  was  yet  before  us  another  trag- 
edy— Liao-Yang. 


ON  THE  WAR-DRAGON'S  TRAIL 

There  was  the  dean  of  the  corps,  one  Mel- 
ton Prior,  who,  in  spite  of  his  years — may  they 
be  many  more — is  still  the  first  war  artist  in 
the  world.  He  was  mounted  on  a  white  horse, 
seventeen  hands  high  and  with  a  weak  back 
that  has  a  history.  Prior  sold  him  in  the  end 
to  a  canny  Englishman,  who  sold  him  to 
the  Japanese — giving  Prior  the  price  asked. 
"  Why,  didn't  you  know  that  he  wasn't 
sound*?"  said  a  man  of  another  race,  who 
wondered,  perhaps,  that  in  a  horse-trade  blood 
should  so  speak  to  blood  even  in  a  strange 
land. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Englishman,  "  but  the  Jap- 
anese won't  know  it."  They  didn't.  There 
was  Richard  Harding  Davis,  who,  for  two  rea- 
sons— the  power  to  pick  from  any  given  inci- 
dent the  most  details  that  will  interest  the  most 

103 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL     103 

people,  and  the  good  luck  or  good  judgment  to 
be  always  just  where  the  most  interesting  thing 
is  taking  place  (with  one  natural  exception, 
that  shall  be  told) — is  also  supreme.  Mount- 
ed on  another  big  horse  was  he — one  Devery  by 
name — with  a  mule  in  the  rear,  of  a  name  that 
must  equally  appeal.  Quite  early,  after  pur- 
chase, Davis  had  laid  whispering  lip  to  flapping 
ear. 

"  ril  call  you  Williams  or  I'll  call  you 
Walker,  just  as  you  choose,"  he  said. 

There  was  no  response. 

"  Then  I'll  call  you  both,"  said  Davis,  and 
that  wayward  animal  was  Williams  and  Wal- 
ker through  the  campaign.  A  double  name  was 
never  more  appropriate,  for  a  flagrant  double 
life  was  his.  There  was  Bill  the  Brill  of  the 
gentle  heart,  on  a  nice  chestnut;  Burleigh,  the 
veteran,  on  a  wretched  beast  that  was  equally 
dangerous  at  either  end ;  Lionel  James  with  cart 
and  coolies  of  his  own,  and  the  Italian  on  a 
handsome  iron-gray.  There  were  the  two 
Frenchmen — Reggie,  the  young,  the  gigantic, 
the   self-controlled   and   never  complaining — 


104,      FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

so  beloved,  that  his  very  appearance  always 
brought  the  Marseillaise  from  us  all — and 
Laguerie,  the  courteous,  ever-vivacious,  irasci- 
ble— so  typical  that  he  might  have  stepped  into 
Manchuria  from  the  stage.  There  was  Whit- 
ing, artist,  on  the  littlest  beast  with  the  biggest 
ambition  that  I  ever  saw  vaulting  on  legs; 
lanky  Wallace,  whose  legs,  like  Lincoln's,  were 
long  enough  to  reach  the  ground — even  when 
he  was  mounted — and  there  were  the  two 
Smiths — English  and  American — and  Lewis, 
gifted  with  many  tongues  and  a  beautiful  bary- 
tone, who,  his  much-boasted  milky  steed  being 
lame,  struck  Oku's  trail  on  foot.  On  Pit-a- 
Pat,  a  pony  that  used  to  win  and  lose  money 
for  us  at  the  Yokohama  races,  was  little 
Clarkin  the  stubborn,  the  argumentative,  who, 
at  a  glance,  was  plainly  sponsor  for  the  highest 
ideals  of  the  paper  that,  in  somebody's  words, 
made  virtue  a  thing  to  be  shunned ;  and,  finally 
and  leastly,  there  were  Fuji  and  his  unhappy 
attachment,  who  chronicles  this. 

These  were  the  men  who  thought  they  were 
going  to  Port  Arthur  and  who,  with  the  sound 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    105 

of  the  big  guns  at  that  fortress  growing  fainter 
behind  them,  struck  Oku's  trail,  up  through  a 
rolling  valley  that  was  bordered  by  two  blue 
volcanic  mountain  chains.  The  sky  was  cloud- 
less and  the  sun  was  hot.  The  roads  were  as 
bad  as  roads  would  likely  be  after  4,000  years 
of  travel  and  4,000  years  of  neglect,  but  the 
wonder  was  that,  after  the  Russian  army  had 
tramped  them  twice  and  the  Japanese  army  had 
tramped  them  once,  they  were  not  worse. 

The  tail  of  the  War-Dragon,  whose  jaws 
were  snapping  at  flying  Russian  heels  far  on 
ahead,  had  been  drawn  on  at  dawn,  and 
through  dust  and  mire  and  sand  we  followed 
its  squirming  wake.  On  the  top  of  every  little 
hill  we  could  see  it  painfully  crawling  ahead 
— length  interminable,  its  vertebrse  carts,  coo- 
lies, Chinese  wagons,  its  body  columns  of  sol- 
diers, its  scales  the  flashes  of  sword-scabbard 
and  wagon-tire — and  whipping  the  dust  heav- 
enward in  clouds.  The  button  on  that  tail 
was  Lynch  the  Irishman  on  a  bicycle,  and  that 
button  was  rolling  itself  headward — leading 
us  all.    Behind,  Lewis  was  eating  the  road  up 


106        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

with  a  swinging  English  stride,  and,  drinking 
the  dust  of  the  world,  we  followed.  Fuji  had 
side-stepped  from  barrack-yard  into  that  road, 
sawing  on  his  bit,  pawing  the  earth,  and  squeal- 
ing challenges  or  boisterous  love-calls  to  any- 
thing and  everything  that  walked.  Sex,  spe- 
cies, biped,  or  quadruped — never  knew  I  such 
indiscriminate  buoyancy — all  were  one  to  Fuji. 
With  malediction  on  tongue  and  murder  in 
heart,  I  sawed  his  gutta-percha  mouth  until 
my  fingers  were  blistered  and  my  very  jaws 
ached,  but  I  could  hold  him  back  only  a  while. 
We  overtook  the  Italian,  a  handsome  boy  with 
a  wild  intensity  of  eye — one  puttee  unwound 
and  flying  after  him.  The  iron-gray  was  giv- 
ing trouble  and  he,  too,  was  unhappy.  We 
passed  Reggie — ^his  great  body  stretched  on  a 
lumpy  heap  of  baggage — with  a  pipe  in  his 
mouth,  that  was  halved  with  his  perennial 
smile  of  unshakable  good-humor,  and  the  other 
Frenchman  squatting  between  two  humps  of 
baggage  on  a  jolting  cart. 

"  Ah  I  "  he  cried  with  extended  hands,  "  you 
see — you  see — "  his  head  was  tossed  to  one 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL     107 

side  just  then,  he  clutched  wildly  first  one  way 
and  then  the  other  and  with  palms  upward 
again — "  you  see  how  com/<9r/able  I  am.  It 
ees  gr-reat — gr-reat  I  "  From  laughter  I  let 
Fuji  go  then  and  he  went — through  coil  after 
coil  of  that  war-dragon's  length,  past  the  creak- 
ing, straining  vertebra,  taking  a  whack  with 
teeth  or  heels  at  something  now  and  then  and 
something  now  and  then  taking  a  similar  whack 
at  him.  The  etiquette  of  the  road  Fuji  either 
knew  not,  or  cared  nothing  for — nor  cared  he 
for  distinctions  of  rank  in  his  own  world  or 
mine.  By  rights  the  led  cavalry  horses  should 
have  had  precedence.  But  nay,  Fuji  passed 
two  regiments  without  so  much  as  "  by  your 
leave  " ;  but  I  was  doing  that  for  him  vigor- 
ously and,  whenever  he  broke  through  the  line, 
I  said  two  things,  and  I  kept  saying  them  that 
I  might  not  be  cut  off  with  a  sword : 

"  Warui  desul  "  I  said,  which  means  "  He's 
bad  I  "  and  "  Gomen  nasai,"  which  is  Japanese 
for  "  Beg  pardon."  These  two  phrases  never 
failed  to  bring  a  smile  instead  of  the  curse  that 
I  might  have  got  in  any  other  army  in  the 


108       FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

world.  We  passed  even  an  officer  who  seemed 
and  was,  no  doubt,  in  a  great  and  just  hurry, 
but  even  his  eyes  had  to  take  the  dust  thrown 
from  Fuji's  heels.  I  pulled  the  beast  in  at  last 
on  top  of  a  little  hill  whence  I  could  see  the  bat- 
tle-hills of  Nanshan.  But  I  cared  no  more  for 
that  field  than  did  Fuji,  both  of  us  being  too 
much  interested  in  life  to  care  much  for  post- 
mortem battle-fields,  and  when  the  rest  came  up, 
we  rode  by  Nanshan  without  turning  up  its 
green  slopes  and  on  to  where  the  first  walled 
Chinese  city  I  had  ever  seen  lifted  its  gate- 
towers  and  high  notched  walls  in  glaring  sun- 
light and  a  mist  of  strangling  dust.  We  passed 
in  through  the  city  gates  and  stopped  where 
I  know  not.  It  was  some  bad-smelling  spot 
under  a  hot  sun,  and  being  off  Fuj  i  and  in  that 
sun,  I  cared  not.  I  have  vague  memories  of 
white  men  coming  by  and  telling  me  to  come 
out  of  the  sun  and  of  not  coming  out  of  the  sun ; 
of  horses  kicking  and  stamping  near  by  and  an 
occasional  neigh  from  Fuji  hitched  in  the  shade 
of  the  city  wall  and  guarded  by  a  Chinaman ;  of 
a  yellow  man  asleep  on  a  cart,  his  unguarded 


ON   THE   WAR-DRAGON'S   TRAIL    109 

face  stark  to  that  sun  and  a  hundred  flies  crawl- 
ing about  his  open  mouth;  and  of  an  alterca- 
tion going  on  between  two  white  men.  One 
said: 

"  Your  horse  has  kicked  mine  —  remove 
him!" 

"  Move  your  own,"  said  another,  and  his 
tone  was  that  of  some  Lord  Cyril  in  a  melo- 
drama.    "  Mine  was  there  first." 

The  other  took  off  his  coat: 

"  I'm  sorry,  but  I've  got  to  fight  you." 

"  Very  well,  then,"  said  Lord  Cyril,  strip- 
ping, too,  and  then  the  voice  of  a  peace-maker 
that  I  knew  well  broke  in  and  in  a  moment  all 
was  still.  Takeuchi  rode  in  on  a  mule.  No 
hitting  the  dust  for  the  proud  feet  of  Takeuchi 
then,  as  I  learned,  nor  afterward,  when  there 
were  any  other  four  feet  that  could  be  made 
to  travel  for  hire. 

"  I  want  a  '  betto,'  "  he  said — which  is  Jap- 
anese for  hostler — "  for  Fuji." 

"Whatever  need  there  be  for  Fuji,  the  ac- 
cursed," said  I,  lapsing  into  such  Oriental 
phraseology  as  I  had  read  in  books,  "  buy,  and 


110       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

buy  quickly — ^my  money  is  in  thy  belt."  He 
bought  then  and  kept  on  buying  afterward. 

Straightway  I  fell  again  into  sun-dreams 
with  the  yellow  man  near  by  whose  mouth  was 
wide,  for  it  was  my  first  experience  with  the 
God  of  Fire  in  his  hell-hot  Eastern  home,  and 
I  strayed  in  them  until  I  was  shaken  into  con- 
sciousness by  a  white  man  with  a  beer-bottle 
in  his  hand.  I  remember  a  garden  and  trees 
next,  a  Chinese  room  with  mats,  a  Chinese 
woman — the  first  I  had  seen — with  a  sad, 
pretty  face,  who  rose,  when  I  came  to  the  door, 
and  stalked  into  a  house  as  though  she  were 
walking  on  deer-hoofs  (every  step  she  took  on 
her  tiny,  misshapen  feet  made  me  shudder), 
and  then  the  sound  of  Davis's  guitar  and 
Lewis's  voice  on  the  soft  night  air  and  under 
a  Manchurian  moon  soaring  starward  above 
the  Eastern  city-wall. 

.  .  .  It  is  noon  of  the  second  day  now 
and  we  sit  in  the  shade  of  willow-trees.  We 
left  that  first  Chinese  town  of  Kinchau  and 
its  dirty  natives  this  morning  at  eight.  The 
dragon's   tail   again   had  been   drawn   ahead 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    111 

through  a  narrow  valley,  rich  in  fields  of  mil- 
let and  com,  from  which  on  either  side  a  bleak, 
hilly,  treeless  desert  ran  desolately  to  a  blue 
mountain  chain.  Now,  still  on  its  trail,  we  sit 
in  a  green  oasis,  on  real  grass  and  under  shel- 
tering willows.  A  lot  of  little  Chinese  boys 
are  around  us,  all  naked  except  for  a  little  em- 
broidered varicolored  stomacher  which  hangs 
by  a  cord  from  the  neck  of  each — for  what  pur- 
pose I  know  not — and  their  elders  are  bringing 
water  for  us  and  sheaves  of  millet-blades  for 
the  menagerie  of  beasts  we  ride.  They  seem 
a  good-natured  race — these  Manchurian  farm- 
ers— genuine,  submissive,  kindly,  but  genuine 
and  human  in  contrast,  if  I  must  say  it,  with 
the  Japanese.  Who  was  it  that  said  the  Chi- 
nese were  the  Saxons  of  the  East  and  the  Jap- 
anese the  Gauls?  I  know  now  what  he  meant. 
Lewis,  in  a  big  white  helmet,  has  just  ridden 
in  on  a  diminutive  white  jackass.  I  envy  the 
peace  and  content  of  both  of  them,  for  Fuji 
was  particularly  bad  this  morning.  Again  he 
passed  everything  on  the  road,  and  as  we  swept 
the  length  of  a  cavalry  column,  I  saw  a  soldier 


112       FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

leading  a  puny  stallion  a  hundred  yards  ahead. 
When  he  heard  us,  he  shouted  a  warning : 

"Warui  desu!" 

At  the  same  time  the  beast  he  was  leading 
turned,  with  ears  laid  back  and  teeth  show- 
ing, and  made  for  us,  dragging  the  soldier 
along.    I  was  greatly  pleased. 

"  Here,  Fuji,"  I  said,  "  is  where  my  revenge 
comes  in.  You  are  going  to  get  it  now  and,  if 
I  mistake  not,  literally  in  the  neck." 

But  the  brute  attacked  me  instead — me.  He 
got  my  right  forearm  between  his  teeth  and 
held  on  imtil  I  shifted  a  stick  from  right  hand 
to  left  and  beat  him  off — the  soldier  spouting 
Japanese  with  French  vivacity  meanwhile  and 
tugging  ineffectively.  I  got  away  only  after 
the  vicious  brute  had  pasted  Fuji  with  both 
heels  first  on  one  side  of  my  right  leg  and  then 
similarly  on  the  other,  missing  me  about  three 
inches  each  time.  Fuji  now  shows  blood  but 
I  am  little  hurt.  Somehow  in  the  scrimmage 
O-kin-san's  charm — the  little  block  of  wood — 
was  broken  in  its  wicker  case  and  whether  the 
heels  reached  it  that  high  I  don't  know.     But 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    113 

it  was  a  good  omen — that  it  should  be  broken 
and  its  owner  still  come  out  unhurt — and  it 
means  that  I  am  to  be  safe  in  this  campaign. 
The  puny  brute  had  not  strength  enough  to 
break  an  Anglo-Saxon  arm — and  it  is  his  kind 
that  make  impossible  for  the  Japanese  certain 
big  guns  that  the  Russians  use. 

.  .  .  It  is  6  P.M.  of  the  third  day  now 
and  we  are  at  Wa-fang-tien.  We  left  Pa- 
lien-tan  this  morning  and  made  thirty-two 
miles.  We  took  lunch  in  a  stinking  Chinese 
village,  and  the  chicken — well,  it  was  a  ques- 
tion which  was  the  more  disturbing  conjecture 
— how  long  it  had  lived  or  how  long  it  had 
been  dead.  Oh,  Yokoyamal  Fuji  has  not  im- 
proved. He  kicked  the  Italian  on  the  leg  to- 
day and  I've  just  helped  to  bandage  it.  Again 
to-day  I  had  to  let  him  go.  I  tried  to  tire  him 
out  by  riding  him  through  mud-holes  and  see- 
sawing him  across  deep  wagon-ruts.  But  it 
was  no  use.  If  a  horse,  bullock,  man,  woman, 
child,  cat,  or  dog  is  visible  500  yards  away,  Fuji 
with  a  squeal  makes  for  it.  When  the  object 
is  overtaken,  Fuji  pays  no  attention  to  it,  but 


114       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

looks  for  something  else  toward  which  he  can 
start  his  squealing  way.  For  brutal,  insensate 
curiosity  give  me  Fuji,  or  rather  give  him  to 
anybody  but  me.  'Tis  an  Eveless  land  for 
Fuji,  but  hope  springs  eternal  for  him.  Din- 
ner is  just  over — tinned  soup,  half-cooked 
tinned  sausages,  prunes  and  rice  from  Yoko- 
yama's  larder — which  we  are  stocking  at  12 
yen  per  day.  Hundreds  of  coolies  are  squat- 
ting along  the  railroad  track.  In  front  of  us 
a  group  of  Japanese  soldiers  has  stood  for 
five  minutes  staring  at  us  with  the  frank  curi- 
osity of  children.  They  began  to  move  away 
when  I  pulled  this  note-book.  Leaning  against 
the  tallest  telegraph-pole,  with  hands  bound 
behind  him,  his  pigtail  tied  to  a  thick  wire 
twice  twisted,  stands  a  miserable  Chinese  coolie. 
An  hour  ago  I  saw  him  on  his  knees  across  the 
track,  held  down  by  four  men,  while  the  littlest 
Japanese  soldier  in  the  group  beat  him  heavily 
with  a  stick  much  thicker  than  the  thumb. 
Then  they  led  him  praying,  howling,  and  limp- 
ing to  the  telegraph-pole,  where  he  stands  as 
an  awful  example  to  his  fellows.     He  had 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL     115 

Stolen  some  coal  and  it  was  his  second  offence. 
It  was  all  right,  of  course,  but  it  was  strange 
to  see  the  apparent  joy  with  which  the  Japan- 
ese did  it  and  stranger  still  to  see  the  other 
coolies  grinning,  chatting,  and  making  fun  of 
the  culprit.  I  wonder  whether  they  were 
crooking  the  pregnant  hinges  of  the  knee  or 
what  on  earth  it  did  mean.  We  were  hung  up 
here  at  3  p.m.,  and  allowed  to  go  no  farther. 
There  is  no  order  for  us  to  remain — only  a 
"  strong  desire  "  that  we  should — which  is  the 
Japanese  way.  Davis  and  I  had  a  great 
bath  to-day  in  a  pool  which  somebody  had 
dammed  up — for  what  purpose  I  know  not. 
What  I  do  know  is  that  it  was  not  meant 
for  us. 

.  .  .  Sitting  on  the  sand,  we  are  this  Au- 
gust 5th  under  birch  saplings  and  by  the  side 
of  a  running  stream.  Davis  and  Lewis  are 
asleep  in  the  sand.  Fifteen  miles  only  is  our 
metier  to-day  and  Brill  is  anxious  to  go  on. 
The  roads  are  bad  farther  on,  say  the  Japanese, 
and  transportation  difficult:  the  only  satisfac- 
tory reason  yet  given  for  this  hideous  delay, 


116       FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

and  this,  I'm  afraid,  not  the  true  one.  They 
simply  don't  trust  us — that's  all.  The  body 
of  the  dragon  is  naturally  getting  bigger  and 
his  vertebra  are  distinctly  more  lumpy.  For  in- 
stance, he  gathered  in  a  train  of  thirty  freight- 
cars  this  morning  and  he  had  six  hundred 
coolies  pulling  it  for  him.  The  button  of  him 
dropped  back  to-day  toward  the  tip  o'  tail  that 
is  his  anatomical  place.  Brill  passed  him  on 
the  road.  His  bicycle-tire  was  punctured  and 
he  was  trying  to  mend  it,  Brill  says,  with  25- 
cent  postage-stamps.  He  evidently  succeeded, 
for  he  has  just  arrived.  He  seems  to  have  had 
a  high  old  time  on  the  way.  At  the  last  Chi- 
nese village  he  halted  long  enough  to  offer  a 
prize — what  I  don't  know — to  the  Chinese 
child  that  could  display  the  prettiest  embroid- 
ered stomacher.  He  had  them  lined  up  in  a 
shy,  smiling  row,  and  was  about  to  deliver  the 
prize  when  the  winner  was  suddenly  thrust  for- 
ward with  a  wonderful  piece  on  his  chubby 
tum-tum.  The  wild  Irishman  gave  him  the 
prize,  hoisted  him  on  the  bicycle  and  circled 
the  compound  swiftly  to  the  delight  of  the  vil- 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    117 

lage.  I  asked  him  how  he  communicated  with 
these  isolated  heathens  and  he  said  he  talked 
Irish  to  them.  I'm  quite  sure  he  does  and  he 
seems  to  make  himself  understood. 

It's  sunset  now  at  North  Wa-fang-tien  and 
all  of  us  are  out  in  a  hard-packed,  sand-floor 
yard  under  little  birch  trees.  It  was  a  hot  ride 
to-day — the  last  mile  being  over  a  glaring 
white  road  and  through  glaring  white  sand. 
That  glare  of  a  fierce  sun  made  the  head  ache 
and  the  very  eyeballs  burn.  I  almost  reeled 
from  Fuji,  who  for  that  mile  was,  for  the  first 
time,  almost  docile. 

We  had  a  shock  and  a  thrill  to-day — Brill, 
Lewis,  Davis,  and  I.  It  was  noon,  and  while 
we  sat  on  a  low  stone  wall  in  a  grassy  grove,  a 
few  carts  filled  with  wounded  Japanese  passed 
slowly  by.  In  one  cart  sat  a  man  in  a  red 
shirt,  with  a  white  handkerchief  tied  over  his 
head  and  under  his  chin.  Facing  him  was  a 
bearded  Japanese  with  a  musket  between  his 
knees.  The  man  in  the  red  shirt  wearily  turned 
his  face.  It  was  young,  smooth-shaven,  and 
white.     The  thrill  was  that  the  man  was  the 


118       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

first  Russian  prisoner  we  had  seen — the  shock 
that  among  those  yellow  faces  was  a  captive 
with  a  skin  like  ours.  I  couldn't  help  feeling 
pity  and  shame — ^pity  for  him  and  a  shame  for 
myself  that  I  needn't  explain.  I  wondered  how 
I  should  have  felt  had  I  been  in  his  place  and 
suddenly  found  four  white  men  staring  at  me. 
It's  no  use.  Blood  is  thicker  than  water — or 
anything  else — in  the  end. 

This  is  distinctly  a  human  country — a  coun- 
try of  cornfields,  beans  and  potatoes,  horses, 
cattle,  sheep,  dogs,  goats,  and  no  freaks  in  tree- 
trunk,  branch,  or  foliage.  But  I  can't  get  over 
seeing  a  Chinaman  in  a  cornfield.  It  is  always 
a  shock.  He  doesn't  seem  to  have  any  right 
there — somehow  nobody  does  except  a  white 
man  or  a  darky.  There  are  tumble-bugs  in 
the  dusty  road  and  gray,  flying  grasshopper- 
like things  that  rise  from  the  dust,  flutter  a  few 
feet  from  the  earth  and  drop  back  again,  just 
as  they  do  at  home.  And  the  dragon-flies — 
why,  they  are  nothing  in  the  world  but  the 
"  snake-doctors  "  that  I  used  to  throw  stones 
at  when  I  was  a  boy  in  the  Bluegrass.     The 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    119 

mountains  are  treeless  and  volcanic,  but  it's  a 
human  country  and  I  don't  feel  as  far  from 
home  as  I  did  in  Japan.  Brill  says  it  all  looks 
like  a  lot  of  Montana  hills  around  Ohio  corn- 
fields :  only  the  corn  is  millet  that  grows  twelve 
feet  high.  The  people  eat  the  top,  they  feed 
the  blades  to  live-stock,  and  the  stalk  serves 
almost  every  purpose  of  bamboo  and  for  fire- 
wood as  well.  You  can  ride  for  hours  between 
two  solid  walls  of  it,  and  you  wonder  how 
there  can  be  people  enough  in  the  scattering 
villages  to  plant  and  till,  or  even  to  cut  it.  A 
richer  land  I  never  saw.  It  looks  as  though  it 
would  feed  both  armies,  and  yet  there  was  no 
sign — no  burned  house  or  robbed  field  or  even 
a  cast-off  bit  of  the  soldier's  equipment  to  show 
that  an  army  had  ever  passed  that  way.  One 
fact  only  spoke  significantly  of  war.  No  wom- 
an— except  a  child  or  a  crone — was  ever  vis- 
ible. This  struck  me — when  I  recalled  the  trail 
of  the  Massachusetts  volunteers  from  Siboney 
to  Santiago  and  the  thousands  of  women  ref- 
ugees straggling  into  Caney — as  very  remark- 
able.    I  suppose  both  Japanese  and  Russians 


120        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

are  trying  to  keep  the  good-will  of  the  China- 
man as  well  as  of  the  rest  of  the  world.  I 
don't  wonder  that  the  Russians  are  fighting  for 
that  land,  nor  shall  I  wonder  should  the  Jap- 
anese, if  they  win,  try  to  keep  it.  But  how  it 
should  belong  to  anybody  but  the  Chinaman 
who  has  tilled  it  in  peace  and  with  no  harm  to 
anybody  for  thousands  of  years — I  can't  for 
the  life  of  me  see. 

Next  morning  there  was  a  sign  of  war.  At 
daybreak  some  red  flecks  from  the  dragon's 
jaws  drifted  back  from  the  mist  and  dust 
through  which  he  was  writhing  forward.  It 
looked,  some  man  said,  like  the  procession  of 
the  damned  who  filed  past  Dante  in  hell. 
Each  man  had  a  red  roll  around  him.  They 
uttered  no  sound — they  looked  not  at  one  an- 
other, but  stared  vacantly  and  mildly  at  us  as 
they  shuffled  silently  from  the  mist  and  shuffled 
silently  on.  The  expression  of  each  was  so  like 
the  expression  of  the  rest  that  they  looked  like 
brothers.  A  more  creepy,  ghost-like  thing  I 
never  saw.  I  knew  not  what  they  were,  but 
they  fascinated  me  and  made  me  shudder,  and 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    121 

I  found  myself  drawing  toward  them,  step  by- 
step,  hardly  conscious  that  I  was  moving.  I 
do  not  recall  that  any  one  of  us  uttered  a  word. 
Yet  they  were  only  sick  men  coming  back  from 
the  front — soldiers  sick  with  the  kakke^  the 
"  beriberi,"  the  sleeping  sickness.  It  was  hard 
to  believe  that  the  face  of  any  one  of  them 
had  ever  belonged  to  a  soldier- — hard  to  be- 
lieve that  sickness  could  make  a  soldier's  face 
so  gentle.  That  man  in  the  red  shirt  and  those 
gray  ghosts  that  shuffled  so  silently  out  of  one 
mist  and  so  silently  into  another  are  the  high 
lights  in  the  two  most  vivid  pictures  I've  seen 
thus  far. 

The  beriberi  comes  from  a  diet  of  too  much 
fish  and  rice,  I  understand.  It  numbs  the  ex- 
tremities and  has  a  paralyzing  effect  on  body 
and  mind.  Summer  is  its  time  and  snow 
checks  its  course.  A  man  may  have  it  a  dozen 
times  and  sometimes  he  dies.  The  young  and 
able-bodied  are  its  favorite  victims,  old  men 
its  rare  ones,  and  women  and  foreigners  it 
wholly  spares.  It  made  great  havoc  among 
Japanese  soldiers  in  Korea,  but  the  Japanese 


122       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

now  conquer  beriberi  as  though  it  were  a  Rus- 
sian metamorphosis. 

Shung-yo-hing  is  the  place  now  and  the  time 
is  2  P.M.  The  heat  was  awful  and  the  dust 
from  thousands  of  carts,  coolies,  and  beasts 
of  burden  choked  the  very  lungs.  I  have  the 
bulge  on  Fuji  now.  I  knot  the  reins  and  draw 
them  over  the  pommel  of  a  McClellan  saddle, 
thus  holding  his  muzzle  close  to  his  chest.  It 
seemed  to  puzzle  Fuji  a  good  deal. 

"  He  can't  even  neigh,"  I  said  to  Brill  in 
triumph,  and  Brill  cackled  scorn.  Fuji  neighed 
five  times  in  the  next  ten  yards.  I  should  say 
that  his  record  in  six  hours  to-day  was  about 
this:  stumbling  with  right  forefoot — 300 
times;  stumbling  with  left  hind-foot — 200 
times;  neighs — 1,000. 

There  are  about  twenty  miles  more  to  Kai- 
ping.  Haicheng  has  been  taken  by  the  Japan- 
ese. Somebody  has  just  come  in  with  cheering 
news — we  can  get  back  to  Yokohama  by  water. 
Gently  we  all  said : 

"Hooray I"  The  parting  from  Fuji  will 
not  be  sad. 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    123 

.  .  .  This  morning  I  found  in  one  pocket 
some  strange  pieces  of  paper  with  strange  ideo- 
graphs thereon  in  Japanese. 

"  What  are  these,  Takeuchi?  " 

Takeuchi  looked  really  embarrassed. 

"  Prayers,"  he  said.  "  I  got  them  at  a  tem- 
ple. If  you  carry  them,  you  will  get  back 
safe."  Well,  that  made  Takeuchi  immune  for 
days. 

At  Kaiping  we  are  now  and  we  go  to  Hai- 
cheng  to-morrow.  At  least  we  think  we  do. 
We  got  here  last  night:  Fuji  being  lame,  I  left 
him  for  Takeuchi  to  lead  (he  rode  him,  of 
course) ;  went  on  afoot  and  later  climbed 
aboard  a  freight-train  drawn  by  600  coolies. 
I  told  the  Japanese  in  my  smattering  best  of 
their  language  that  my  horse  had  gone  lame, 
and  they  were  very  polite.  The  train  went 
slowly  along  the  dragon's  length  and  I  had  a 
chance  to  observe  minutely  those  vertebrae — 
heavy  Chinese  wagons,  the  wheels  with  two 
thick  huge  spokes  cross-barred,  the  hoops  of 
wood  and  studded  with  big,  shining  rivets,  and 
the  axles  turning  with  the  wheels;  between  the 


124       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

shafts,  a  horse,  bullock,  or  a  mule;  in  front, 
three  leaders,  usually  donkeys,  mules  (the  best 
I've  seen  out  of  America),  or  bullocks,  in 
all  possible  combinations  of  donkey,  mule,  or 
bullock.  Sometimes  an  ass  colt  trotted  along- 
side. The  drivers  were  Chinese  coolies,  each 
with  a  long  whip — the  butt  of  bamboo,  the 
shaft  spliced  with  four  cane  reeds,  the  lash  of 
leather  and  the  cracker  as  it  is  all  over  the 
rural  world.  The  two  or  three  leaders  of  the 
four-  or  five-in-hand,  pulled  by  ropes  attached 
to  the  cart  at  either  side  of  the  cart  to  one  side 
of  each  shaft.  The  hames  were  two  flat  pieces 
of  wood,  lashed  to  a  straw  collar  that  was 
sometimes  canvas-covered.  The  cries  of  the 
drivers,  strange  as  they  sounded  to  the  for- 
eigner near  by,  were  at  a  distance  strangely 
like  the  cries  of  drivers  everywhere: 

"Attal    Atta!    Atta-atta-atta !  " 

"  Usui !     Usui ! — u-u-u-su-u-i !  " 

"Whoa-a-ahl" 

At  noon,  Lionel  James  and  little  Clarkin 
rode  by  and  shouted  that  the  Japanese  Com- 
mandant there  had  a  lunch  ready  near  by.    We 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    125 

found  half  a  dozen  tables  set  in  the  walled 
yard  of  a  Chinese  farmhouse.  All  of  us  were 
expected,  but  the  others  (except  the  Japanese 
correspondents  who  were  on  hand)  had  gone 
on.  There  was  a  nice  sergeant  there  and  a 
grave  major  with  medals,  and  there  were  sol- 
diers with  fans  to  keep  off  the  flies,  while  we 
sat  in  an  arbor,  under  white  Malaga-like  clus- 
ters of  grapes,  and  had  tea  and  beer  and  tinned 
Kobbe  beef  and  army  crackers.  The  rain  start- 
ed when  we  started  on — and  when  it  rains  in 
Manchuria,  it  really  seems  to  rain.  I  was  on 
foot  in  a  light  flannel  shirt,  and  had  no  coat  or 
poncho.  In  ten  minutes  the  road  had  a  slip- 
pery coating  of  mud,  I  was  wet  to  the  skin  and, 
as  my  boots  had  very  low  heels,  I  was  slipping 
right,  left,  and  backward  with  every  step. 
Clarkin  and  James  overtook  me  and  we  took 
turns  walking.  In  an  hour  the  road  was  a  very 
swift  river,  belly-deep  and  with  big  waves — 
dangerous  to  cross.  Miles  and  miles  we  went 
through  muddy  cornfields  for  four  hours,  until 
we  could  see,  across  a  yellow  river,  the  high, 
thick  walls  of  Kaiping  through  the  drizzling 


126       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

mist.  I  waded  the  river,  waist-high,  and  on 
the  other  side  an  interpreter  gave  me  a  white 
mule,  which  I  took  in  order  not  to  get  my  boots 
muddy  again.  We  wound  into  a  city  gate, 
were  stopped  by  a  sentry  and  sent  on  again 
around  the  city  walls  and  three  or  four  miles 
across  a  muddy,  slushy  flat,  full  of  deep  wagon- 
ruts  and  holes.  After  much  floundering  through 
mud,  and  the  fording  of  many  streams,  we 
found  the  Commandant  with  his  shoes  under 
his  chair  and  his  naked  feet  on  the  rungs. 
James  clicked  his  heels  and  saluted.  We  all 
took  off  our  hats,  but  as  he  neither  rose  nor 
moved  naked  foot  toward  yawning  shoe,  we 
put  them  back  on  again.  We  must  go  to  Kai- 
ping,  he  said,  and  he  was  very  indifferent  and 
smiled  blandly  when  we  told  him  that  we  had 
just  waded  and  swum  from  Kaiping.  Just  the 
same  we  had  to  wade  and  swim  back — by  the 
same  floundering  way  and  through  gathering 
darkness.  We  missed  the  way,  of  course,  rode 
entirely  around  the  city  walls,  rode  through 
Kaiping  and  back  again,  and  finally  struck  an 
interpreter  who  piloted  us  to  this  Chinese  tem- 


ON    THE    WAR-DRAGON'S    TRAIL    127 

pie  where  I  write.  I  was  cold,  muddy,  hungry, 
and  tired  to  the  bone.  But  the  button  on  the 
dragon's  tail  was  there,  and  Brill  the  gentle; 
and,  mother  of  mercies  I  they  had  things  to  eat 
and  to  drink.  An  hour  later,  Davis  came  in 
half-dead — leading  Prior  on  Williams  and 
Walker.  He  had  struck  the  same  gentleman 
of  the  naked  foot  and  yawning  shoe,  had  been 
sent  on,  and  had  gone  into  a  stream  over  his 
head  and  crawled  on  hands  and  knees  most  of 
the  way  through  pitch  dark.  He  didn't  mind 
himself,  but  Prior  was  elderly  and  was  ill. 
Davis  wanted  the  Commandant  to  take  him  in, 
but  he  refused  and  Davis  was  indignant: 

"  I  wouldn't  turn  a  water-snake  out  of  doors 
on  a  night  like  this." 

But  those  two  same  Samaritans  saved  him 
straightway,  and  we  sit  now  in  Chinese  clothes 
in  front  of  a  temple  and  under  a  great  spread- 
ing, full-leafed  tree,  with  two  horses  champing 
millet  before  the  altar  and  thousands  of  buzz- 
ing flies  around.    To-morrow  we  go  on  I 


VI 

THE  WHITE  SLAVES  OF  HAICHENG 

Haicheng  at  last!  The  Russians  are  only 
five  miles  away  and  they  can  drop  shells  on 
us,  but  they  don't.  The  attaches  were  taken 
out  on  a  reconnaissance  yesterday,  and  we,  too, 
if  we  are  very  good,  will  be  allowed  to  see  a 
Japanese  soldier  in  a  real  ante-mortem  trench. 

We  left  Yoka-tong  this  morning  at  seven 
and  in  three  hours  reached  dirty,  fly-ridden 
Ta-shi-kao.  The  valley  has  broadened  as  we 
have  come  north.  The  Chinese  houses  are  bet- 
ter and  the  millet-fields  (kow-liang)  stretch 
away  like  a  sea  on  each  side  of  the  road.  Sol- 
diers were  bathing  in  the  river  that  we  crossed 
to  get  to  the  gate  of  Haicheng,  and  the  stretch 
of  sand  was  dotted  with  naked  men.  Every 
grove  was,  in  color,  mingled  black,  brown,  and 
dirty  white  from  the  carts,  horses,  and  soldiers 
packed  under  the  trees.  We  found  the  courteous 
Captain  of  Gendarmes,  by  accident,  straight- 
way, and  we  had  to  take  tea  hot,  tea  cold,  and 

128 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF   HAICHENG     129 

tea  with  condensed  milk  before  he  would  lead  us 
to  our  quarters  in  this  mud  compound.  Lewis, 
Reggie,  and  Scull  greeted  us  with  a  shout  and 
produced  beer  and  Tansan  and  a  bottle  of 
champagne  cider.  Heavens,  what  nectar  each 
was  I  The  rest  are  coming,  but  the  button  on 
the  dragon's  tail — the  Irishman  on  the  bicycle 
— ^has  come  off.  Nobody  knows  where  it 
dropped.  Reggie  the  big  Frenchman  is  newly 
mounted  on  a  savage  yellow  beast  that  can  be 
approached,  like  a  cow,  only  on  the  right  side — 
and  Lewis  told  the  story  of  the  two.  Davis 
answered  with  the  story  of  our  tribulations — 
his,  Brill's  and  mine.  He  told  it  so  well  that 
Brill  and  I  wished  we  had  been  there.  .  .  . 
We  slept  in  our  riding-clothes  for  the  third 
time  last  night  and  to-day  we  know  our  fate. 
We  are  to  play  a  week's  engagement  here  in  a 
drama  of  still  life — the  title  of  which  heads 
these  lines.  With  a  sleeve-badge  of  identifica- 
tion on — the  Red  Badge  of  Shame  we  call  it — 
we  can  wander  more  or  less  freely  within  the 
city  walls.  We  can  even  climb  on  them  and 
walk  around  the  town — about  two  miles — but 


130       FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

we  cannot  go  outside  without  a  written  appli- 
cation from  the  entire  company,  and  then  only 
under  a  guard.  We  are  to  have  three  guards, 
by  the  way,  and  our  letters — even  private  ones 
— are  to  go  to  the  censor  and  not  come  back  to 
us.  Thus  no  man  will  know  what  has  gone, 
and  what  hasn't,  or  whether  what  went  was 
worth  sending.  Later  this  restriction  was  re- 
moved. 

Our  Three  Guardsmen  came  to  us  last  night 
and  told  these  things.  One  was  thick-set, 
bearded,  and  a  son  of  Chicago  University;  one 
was  smooth-shaven,  thin-faced — and  an  author- 
ity on  international  law — both,  of  course, 
speaking  English.  The  third  carried  a  small 
mustache  and  talked  very  good  French — so  said 
Reggie.  After  the  usual  apologies,  the  beard- 
ed one  said  in  partial  excuse  for  shackling  us: 

"  Some  of  our  common  soldiers,  never  hav- 
ing seen  a  foreigner  before,  are  not  able  to 
distinguish  between  you  and  Russians.  We 
wish  to  provide  against  accidents."  And  he 
laughed. 

An  incident  on  the  way  here,  yesterday  after- 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     131 

noon,  made  this  sound  plausible.  I  was  riding 
alone,  and  hearing  a  noise  behind  me  I  turned 
in  my  saddle,  to  see  a  Japanese  slipping  upon 
me  with  his  bayonet  half-drawn  from  his  scab- 
bard. I  stopped  Fuji  and  said:  "Nan  desu- 
ka?  "  (What  is  it?)  and  he,  too,  stopped,  and 
turned  back.  Whether  this  was  a  case  in  point 
or  whether  he  was  drunk  and  showing  off  be- 
fore his  companions,  or  whether  my  Tokio  ac- 
cent paralyzed  him,  I  don't  know,  but  later, 
the  men  who  broke  away  from  our  guards  and 
got  among  the  soldiers,  testified  that  they  re- 
ceived nothing  but  courtesy,  kindness,  and 
childlike  curiosity  from  the  Japanese  Tommy 
always. 

"You  saw  Nanshan?  "  asked  the  bearded 
one. 

"  No,"  I  said.  "  We  want  to  see  fighting, 
not  battle-fields."    He  laughed  again. 

"  You  have  had  a  very  hard  time,  but  I 
think  the  fight  at  Liao-Yang  will  recompense 
you." 

"  Have  you  heard  anything  from  Port  Ar- 
thur?" 


132        FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

"  Nothing." 

"  We  heard  the  guns  as  we  came  by  and  it 
was  very  exasperating."    He  laughed  again. 

"  We  do  not  think  much  about  Port  Arthur. 
That  is  only  a  question  of  time.  Liao-Yang 
will  be  decisive.  The  sooner  the  Russians  give 
up  at  Port  Arthur,  the  better  it  will  be  for 
them." 

"  But  they  not  only  lose  their  own  ships, 
but  free  the  Japanese  fleet  for  operations  else- 
where." 

"  That's  true." 

"  And  they  free  the  investing  army  for  oper- 
ations up  here." 

"  That's  true."  He  shook  his  head.  "  But 
Liao-Yang  will  be  decisive." 

They  got  up  to  go  then  and  the  bearded  one 
simply  bowed.  The  other  two  shook  hands 
all  around,  and  when  they  were  through,  the 
third  said:  "Well,  I  will  shake  hands,  too," 
and  he  went  the  round. 

Lewis  has  just  come  in — his  face  luminous 
with  joyful  news.  General  Oku  has  sent  us 
over: 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     133 

1  doz.  bottles  of  champagne. 
4  doz.  bottles  of  beer. 
1  package  of  fly-paper. 
1  live  sheep. 

Liao-Yang  is  only  about  twenty-nine  miles 
away,  and  the  Three  Guardsmen  say  we  are 
not  to  be  here  very  long.  If  the  Russians  can 
drop  a  shell  on  us  here,  I  wish  they  would — 
just  one,  anyhow.  Even  one  would  save  the 
faces  of  us  a  little. 

.  .  .  That  poor  Manchuria  lamb  of  Gen- 
eral Oku's  died  voluntarily  this  morning  before 
the  canteen-man  could  kill  it — but  the  cham- 
pagne, the  beer,  and  the  fly-paper  are  all  the 
heart  could  desire.  This  day  has  been  inter- 
esting. The  Three  Guardsmen  rounded  us  up 
this  afternoon  and  took  us  to  see  General  Oku. 

We  burnished  up  riding-gear  and  riding- 
clothes  and  at  three  o'clock  the  compound  was 
filled  with  squealing  stallions  and  braying 
jackasses.  It  took  three  men  to  saddle  Reggie's 
savage  Mongolian.  The  Irishman,  as  usual, 
was  not  to  be  found — he  and  Scull  had  gone 


134        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

afoot,  to  the  worry  of  the  Three  Guardsmen; 
but  we  rode  out  finally,  single-file,  a  brave  but 
strangely  assorted  company — Brill  on  his  chest- 
nut, Lewis  on  a  milk-white  charger,  the  Italian 
on  an  iron-gray,  Davis  on  Devery,  Laguerie  on 
a  little  white  donkey.  Prior  on  his  seventeen- 
hand,  weak-backed  white  horse,  and  big  Bur- 
leigh on  a  tiny  savage  pony  that  pasted  Prior's 
horse,  as  we  marched,  with  both  heels. 

"  Why  don't  you  go  to  the  rear,  Burleigh?  " 
said  Prior.     "  That  beast  of  yours  kicks." 

"  No,  he  doesn't,"  said  Burleigh  indignant- 
ly.    "  He  only  bites." 

These  two  veterans  and  Davis  wore  ribbons 
on  the  left  breast.  Dean  Prior,  indeed,  seemed 
to  have  his  color-box  there.  I  had  a  volunteer 
policeman's  badge  that  came  from  the  moun- 
tains of  old  Virginia.  I  was  proud  of  it,  and 
it  meant  campaigns,  too,  but  I  couldn't  pull 
it  amidst  the  glory  of  those  three.  Lieutenant 
Satake,  the  authority  on  international  law, 
led.  The  bearded  one  guarded  our  centre  and 
the  third  watched  our  rear.  At  the  city  gate  a 
sergeant  sprang  to  his  feet: 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     135 

"  Hoo —  I  "  he  said,  and  I  thought  he  was 
going  to  give  us  a  whole  cheer,  but  it  was  only 
a  half.  Still  all  the  sentries  sprang  to  atten- 
tion and  the  soldiers  at  the  gate  stood  rigid  as 
their  muskets.  Over  the  stretch  of  white  sand, 
across  the  yellow  river,  and  up  a  sandy  road  we 
went,  past  staring  sentries,  and  then  into  a  little 
Chinese  village,  where  we  dismounted.  No 
servants  were  allowed,  so  soldiers  came  for- 
ward to  hold  our  horses.  Fuji  was  curvetting 
no  little. 

"  Warui  desu !  "  I  said,  which  still  means, 
"  He's  bad,"  and  the  soldier  smiled  and  led 
Fuji  far  to  one  side. 

We  followed  Satake  into  a  court-yard.  He 
seemed  rather  nervous  and  presently  motioned 
us  to  halt.  Presently  he  came  back,  called  the 
roll,  and  each  man,  after  answering  his  name, 
stepped  to  one  side  and  stood  in  line  where 
there  were  two  tables  under  grape  arbors  and 
covered  with  cigars  and  cigarettes.  Satake 
looked  relieved — not  one  of  us  had  escaped; 
even  the  Irishman  was  there.  Several  officers 
stood   expectantly   about,    and,    after   a   long 


136       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

pause,  a  tired-looking,  slender  man  appeared, 
accompanied  by  a  rather  stout,  sleek-looking 
young  one,  and  followed  by  an  officer  with  a 
beard  and  a  rather  big  nose  that  in  color  be- 
spoke considerable  cheer.  When  they  got  near, 
a  sad-faced  interpreter  stepped  forward  and  in 
a  sad,  uneasy  voice  said: 

"  I  have  the  honor  to  present  you  to  His 
Imperial  Highness,  Prince  Nashimoto." 

The  sleek  young  man  bowed  and  thrust  out 
his  hand.  We  all  advanced,  spoke  each  his 
own  name,  and  shook.  Prior  said,  "  Melton 
Prior." 

Burleigh,  bending  low,  said,  almost  confi- 
dentially : 

"  Burleigh."     Davis  came  last 

"  Mr.  Davis."  Then  the  tired-looking  man, 
General  Oku,  and  his  aide  with  the  nose  of 
good  cheer,  shook  hands:  only  it  was  they  who 
went  around  the  circle  this  time.  The  Prince 
retired  behind  one  of  the  tables  and  General 
Oku  stepped  forward  with  his  back  to  the 
Prince,  and  through  the  sad  interpreter  said 
things : 


WHITE    SLAVES   OF    HAICHENG     137 

We  had  come  thousands  of  miles  and  had 
endured  many  hardships  getting  to  the  front, 
and  he  welcomed  us.  He  was  sorry  that  on 
the  battle-field  he  could  give  us  so  few  com- 
forts, but  he  was  glad  to  see  us  and  would  do 
all  he  could  for  us,  etc.,  etc. 

Such  solemnity  as  there  was  I  Aide  stood 
behind  General — staff  behind  the  aide.  Most 
of  them  kept  their  faces  bent  till  chin  touched 
breast,  and  never  looked  up  at  all.  If  a  high 
priest  had  been  making  a  prayer  for  the  soul 
of  a  dead  monarch  while  other  priests  listened, 
the  scene  could  not  have  been  more  solemn. 
Straight  through,  it  was  stiff,  formal,  uneasy — 
due,  of  course,  to  the  absence  of  a  common 
tongue  and  the  uneasiness  on  the  part  of  the 
Japanese  in  receiving  us  after  the  Occidental 
way;  and  I  wondered  if  the  scene  would  not 
have  been  the  same  had  Occidentals  been  re- 
ceiving the  Japanese  after  the  way  of  Japan. 
But  I  think  not — American  humor  and  adapta- 
bility would  have  lightened  the  gloom  a  little. 
I  watched  Oku  keenly.  Though  I  had  seen 
him  coming  for  twenty  yards,  I  recalled  sud- 


138       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

denly  that  I  saw  nothing  but  his  face  until  he 
got  quite  near.  It  was  sad  with  something  of 
Lincoln's  sadness.  In  profile,  it  was  kindly, 
especially  when  he  smiled;  full-faced  there 
were  proofs  that  he  could  be  iron  and  relent- 
less. But  his  eyes!  Big,  black,  glittering, 
fanatical,  ever-moving  they  were,  and  you 
caught  them  never  but  for  a  moment,  but  when 
you  did,  they  made  you  think  of  lightning  and 
thunder-storms.  He  was  dressed  simply  in 
olive-green  serge,  with  one  star  on  his  cap  and 
three  stars  and  three  stripes  on  his  sleeve.  His 
boots  were  good.  His  sword  hung  in  his  left 
hand — unclinched.  His  other  hand  looked 
nerveless.  Not  once  did  he  shift  his  weight 
from  his  right  foot — only  the  sole  of  his  left 
ever  touching  the  stone  flagging.  He  is  the 
most  remarkable  looking  man  I've  seen  thus  far 
among  the  Japanese,  and  I  think  we  shall  hear 
from  him. 

Then  the  aide  with  the  cheerful  nose  spoke 
the  same  welcome  and  hoped  we  would  obey 
the  regulations.  Dean  Prior  answered,  thank- 
ing the  General  for  the  champagne,  the  beer, 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     139 

the  fly-paper,  and  the  lamb,  whose  untoward 
demise  he  gracefully  skipped,  and  said  he  had 
always  been  trusted  by  generals  in  the  field  and 
hoped  he  would  be  trusted  now.  Then  we 
smoked  and  the  Irishman  spoke  halting  French 
with  the  Prince,  who  (he  looked  it)  had  been 
educated  in  Paris.  General  Oku  asked  ques- 
tions and  we  asked  questions. 

"  How  long  have  you  been  in  Japan*? " 

"  More  than  five  months."  He  laughed  and 
his  teeth  were  not  good. 

"  You  must  know  Tokio  well." 

"  I  know  every  stone  in  Tokio,"  somebody 
said. 

The  General  did  not  smile  this  time. 

"  Have  you  been  to  Nikko"?  "  This  was  a 
malicious  chance. 

"  We  were  afraid  to  leave  Tokio  for  fear 
of  not  getting  to  the  front." 

"  Shall  we  see  much  fighting?  " 

"  I  think  so — from  a  high  place.  You  can- 
not see  in  the  valleys — the  kow-liang  is  too 
high  to  see  over  even  on  horseback.  Yes,  you 
will  see  the  fight." 


140        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

Then  we  shook  hands  again,  saluted  the  staff 
and  departed. 

The  Japanese  soldier  had  Fuji  behind  a  tree 
— and  he  was  smiling. 

"  Warui  desu  I  "  he  said,  and  he  looked  at 
me  with  approval  that  I  dared  ride  him;  for 
Fuji  was  Japanese  and  bad,  and  Japanese  are 
not  good  horsemen.  At  any  rate,  he  followed 
me  to  the  gate  and  held  Fuji  twice  more  be- 
fore we  finally  got  away.  On  the  way  back 
to  captivity  Laguerie  turned  a  somersault  over 
his  white  donkey's  head.  He  rose,  spluttering, 
between  the  donkey's  forelegs.  It  looked  for 
a  moment  as  though  the  donkey  were  riding 
Laguerie. 

At  sunset,  next  day,  the  Irishman  said: 
"  Come  with  me,"  and  I  followed  unques- 
tioning, because  questioning  was  useless.  Out 
the  compound  we  went,  through  narrow  streets 
and  up  a  rocky  little  hill  in  the  centre  of  the 
village,  where  we  could  look  over  the  low  tiled 
roofs — here  and  there  a  tree  was  growing  up 
through  them — over  the  mud-enclosures,   the 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     141 

high-notched  city  walls,  the  stretch  of  white 
sand  beyond,  a  broader  stretch  of  green  still 
farther  on,  slit  with  the  one  flashing  cimeter- 
like  sweep  of  the  river — and  then  over  the  low 
misty  hills  to  the  tender  after-glow,  above 
which  wisp-like,  darkening  clouds  hung  mo- 
tionless. 

"  Greatest  people  in  the  world,"  said  the 
Irishman  with  an  all-encompassing  sweep  of 
his  right  arm.  "  All  happy — all  peaceful. 
The  soldier  lowest  here  in  the  social  scale — in 
Japan,  the  highest.  Home  the  unit.  Tilled 
the  same  soil  for  countless  generations — always 
plenty  to  eat.  We  forced  opium  on  'em  with 
war  in  '52.  To  think  they've  got  to  be  cursed 
with  our  blasted,  blasting  materialism." 

I  had  been  through  all  that  with  the  Irish- 
man many  times  before,  so  we  went  on.  From 
a  gateway  a  cur  barked  viciously  at  us.  An 
old  man  came  out  to  call  him  in  and  the  Irish- 
man took  the  Chinaman  by  the  arm  and  pointed 
to  a  walled  enclosure  on  the  extreme  summit. 

"  I  want  to  get  in  there."  How,  on  sight, 
he  wins  the  confidence  of  these  people — men. 


142       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

women,  and  children — how  he  makes  himself 
understood,  not  knowing  a  word  of  Chinese, 
I  don't  know.  Straightway  the  old  fellow 
went  with  us,  the  Irishman  clinging  to  his  arm, 
pounded  on  the  heavy  door  and  left  us. 

"  What  is  it?  " 

"  A  monastery,"  said  the  Irishman. 

An  ancient  opened  the  portal,  by  and  by, 
and  we  went  in — through  an  alley-way  to  a 
court-yard,  stone-flagged — and  I  almost  gasped. 
Temples  age-worn,  old  gardens  tangled  and 
unkempt  and  trees  unpruned,  dropped  in  ter- 
races below  us;  and  with  them  in  terraces 
dropped,  too,  the  notched  gray  walls  that  shut 
in  the  hushed  silence  of  the  spot  from  the 
noise  of  the  outside  world.  Black-and-white 
magpies  flew  noiselessly  about  among  the  trees. 
Somewhere  pigeons  cooed  and  butterflies  were 
fluttering  everywhere.  It  was  a  deserted  Con- 
fucian monastery — gone  to  wreck  and  ruin  with 
only  one  priest  to  guard  it,  but  untouched  by 
the  hand  of  Russian  or  Japanese.  Both  use 
temples  only  when  they  must,  and  it  seems  that 
Occidentals  have  much  to  learn  from  Tartar 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     143 

and  heathen  in  reverence  for  the  things  that 
concern  the  universal  soul.  To  escape  that 
compound,  we  should  have  pitched  our  tents 
there,  I  suppose,  had  we  been  allowed.  But 
it  was  a  place  of  peaceful  refuge  open  to  us 
all.  An  Irishman  had  found  it,  and  sharing 
the  discovery  we  sat  there  and  dreamed  in  si- 
lence until  the  after-glow  was  gone. 

.  .  .  It  is  pretty  mournful  this  morning 
— rainy,  muddy,  dreary,  dark.  We  have  estab- 
lished a  policing  system — each  man  taking 
turn;  but  the  mud  in  the  court-yard  deepens 
and  the  smells  fade  not  at  all.  We  have  flies, 
mosquitoes,  night-bugs  that  are  homelike  in 
species  and  scorpions  that  are  not.  Every  man 
shakes  his  shoes  in  the  morning  for  a  hiding 
scorpion.  A  soldier  brought  in  a  dead  one  to- 
day, that  yesterday  had  bitten  him  on  the  hand. 
He  was  bandaged  to  the  shoulder,  and  but  for 
quick  treatment  might  have  lost  his  arm.  It 
can't  be  healthy  in  here,  but  only  Dean  Prior 
and  two  others  have  been  ill.  What  a  game 
Dean  it  is,  by  the  way !  He  laughs  at  his  sick- 
ness, laughs  when  that  big  white  horse  with  the 


144       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

weak  back  goes  down  in  a  river  or  mud-hole 
with  him,  and  never  complains  at  all.  I  have 
never  seen  such  forbearance  and  patience  and 
good-humor  among  any  set  of  men.  If  a  man 
wakes  up  cross  and  in  an  ill-humor — that  day 
is  his.  He  may  kick  somebody's  water-pail 
over  the  wall,  storm  at  his  servant,  curse  out 
the  food,  and  be  a  general  irritable  nuisance; 
but  the  rest  forbear,  look  down  at  tiieir  plates, 
and  nobody  says  a  word,  for  each  knows  that 
the  next  day  may  be  his.  This  forbearance  is 
one  benefit  anyhow  that  we  are  getting  out  of 
this  campaign,  which  is  a  sad,  sad  waste  thus 
far.  But  Reggie  appears  at  the  door.  As  he 
marches  past  us  we  rise  and  sing  the  Marseil- 
laise; when  he  marches  back,  we  sing  it  again, 
and  that  smile  of  his  is  reward  enough.  There 
is  good  news — we  are  to  go  out  on  a  recon- 
naissance to-morrow,  ourselves. 

•         ••«•<• 

Holy  Moses  I  but  that  reconnaissance  was  a 
terrifying  experience.  We  went  out  past  the 
station  where  the  last  fight  was,  along  a  dusty 
road  and  up  a  little  hill,  left  our  horses  under 


WHITE    SLAVES   OF    HAICHENG     145 

its  protecting  bulk,  sneaked  over  the  top,  and 
boldly  stood  upright  on  the  slant  of  the  other 
side.  Below  us  was  a  big  rude  cross  over  a 
Russian  grave.    Things  were  pointed  out  to  us. 

"  You  see  that  big  camel-backed  mountain 
there,"  said  one  of  the  Three  Guardsmen.  We 
levelled  glasses.  "  Well,  that's  where  the  main 
body  of  the  Russians  are." 

"  How  far  away  is  that  camel-back?  "  some- 
body asked  innocently.  The  Guardsman  had 
turned  and  was  beckoning  violently  to  the  Ital- 
ian (who  was  on  top  of  the  little  hill,  some 
thirty  feet  above  us)  to  come  down.  Then 
he  said: 

"  About  ten  miles." 

"So  desukal  "  (truly)  said  the  same  voice, 
lapsing  with  awe  into  Japanese. 

"  So  desu !  " — which  is  "  truly  "  in  response, 
— said  the  Guardsman  with  satisfaction,  and 
we  had  a  thrill.  The  Italian  now  had  blithely 
drawn  near.  He  seemed  unafraid,  but  perhaps 
he  had  been  unaware  of  his  peril  on  the  sky- 
line only  ten  miles  from  a  Russian  gun. 

Then  we  cautiously  advanced  along  the  road 


146^       FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

for  another  half  a  mile  to  an  empty  trench  in 
a  little  camp  near  which  there  must  have  been 
all  of  twenty  Japanese  soldiers.  One  corre- 
spondent stepped  across  the  trench  and  was 
gesticulated  back  with  some  warmth.  Davis 
sat  down  on  the  trench  and  was  politely  asked 
to  get  up  and  move  back — not  that  he  would 
hurt  the  trench,  but  because  he  was  sitting  on 
the  half  of  it  that  was  next  the  ten-mile-away 
enemy — and  apparently  the  Guardsman  had 
orders  that  we  must  not  cross  a  carefully 
marked  line.  Davis  got  up  like  a  shot  and 
hurriedly  went  away  back  to  sit  down. 

The  major  of  the  post  there  gave  us  tea  and 
beer  at  his  quarters  near  by.  He  was  a  big  fel- 
low and  was  most  kind  and  courteous.  He 
had  been  a  professor  in  a  war-college  and  had 
asked  the  privilege  of  death  at  the  front.  He 
got  it,  poor  fellow,  and  later  I  saw  a  picture 
of  his  body  being  burned  after  the  fight  at 
Liao-Yang. 

We  are  getting  pretty  restless  now.  The 
Irishman  and  I  were  denied  admittance  at  the 
monastery  yesterday  by  the  order  of  the  Im- 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     147 

perial  Highness  whom  we  met  the  other  day. 
However,  he  relaxed  it  in  our  favor.  Dean 
Prior  started  to  go  up  on  the  city  wall  to-day 
to  sketch,  and  was  stopped  by  a  sentry,  who  put 
a  naked  bayonet  within  two  feet  of  his  breast. 
He  came  back  raging,  and  wrote  a  scathing 
letter  which  I  don't  think  he  will  send. 

This  morning  Wong  came. 

At  ten  o'clock  the  Irishman  appeared  at  the 
entrance  of  the  compound,  leading  by  the  hand 
a  little  Chinese  boy  some  eight  or  ten  years  old. 
He  was  the  dirtiest  little  wretch  I  ever  saw,  but 
he  smiled — and  never  saw  I  such  teeth  or  such 
a  winsome  smile.  The  Irishman  said  simply 
and  gravely: 

"  This  is  Wong,"  and  no  more.  He  led  the 
boy  behind  the  paling  that  enclosed  our  bath- 
ing-quarters, plucking,  as  he  walked,  a  sponge 
and  a  cake  of  soap,  which  happened  to  be  mine. 
Then  I  heard: 

"  Take  it  off!  "  And  again:  "  Take  it  off, 
I  say!" 

Apparently  he  was  obeyed.    Then: 


148        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

"  Take  that  off,  too;  yes,  that,  too!  "  Evi- 
dently the  boy  had  but  two  garments  on,  for 
considerable  splashing  took  the  place  of  per- 
emptory commands.  By  and  by  they  came  out 
together  and,  still  hand  in  hand,  passed  out  of 
the  compound.  In  half  an  hour  the  Irishman 
came  back. 

"I've  just  taken  Wong  down  to  Poole's," 
he  said,  still  gravely,  "  to  get  him  a  new  suit 
of  clothes." 

"  The  trousers  were  too  long,  and  Wong  ob- 
jected. Poole  told  him  that  trousers  were  worn 
long  this  season,  and  Wong  compromised  by 
rolling  them  up.    He'll  be  here  by  and  by." 

By  and  by  Wong  came  back  resplendent  in 
new  blouse,  new  trousers,  new  shoes  and  socks. 
On  his  breast  was  sewed  a  big  white  piece  of 
cotton  in  the  shape  of  a  shamrock,  and  on  the 
shamrock  was  printed  this : 

WONG 

Cup-bearer  and  Page  in  Waiting 

to 

,  Esquire. 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     149 

Straightway  was  Wong  an  habitue  of  the 
compound  and  straightway  his  education  be- 
gan.   Wong  was  quick  to  learn. 

"Attention,  Wong  I  "  the  Irishman  would 
say,  and  Wong  would  spring  to  his  feet  and 
dash  for  a  bottle  of — Tansan. 

"  Make  ready  I  "  Wong  would  poise  the 
bottle.  "  Aim — fire !  "  Wong  would  fire,  and 
then  would  come  the  command,  "When I" 
which  meant  "  cease  firing  I  "  and  Wong,  per- 
fect little  soldier  that  he  was,  would  cease, 
though  his  genial  hospitality  and  genuine  con- 
cern for  the  happiness  of  everybody  made  ceas- 
ing very  hard.  If  his  master  ordered  a  bottle 
of  wine  at  the  table,  Wong  would  pass  it  to 
every  man.  He  was  equally  hospitable  in  the 
matter  of  cigarettes — anybody's;  for  he  could 
never  see  that  what  belonged  to  one  man  did 
not  belong  to  all.  Essentially,  in  that  crowd, 
he  was  right.  But  it  was  rather  expensive  for 
the  Irishman,  until  one  day  he  told  Wong  al- 
ways to  take  the  chits  to  "  that  fat  man  " — 
who  was  not  Reggie — and  thereafter  the  fat 
man  got  them. 


150       FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

Wong  had  caught  the  military  salute  from 
the  Japanese  soldiers,  and  every  morning,  when 
he  came  in,  he  would  go  around  to  each  of  us 
in  turn,  clicking  his  heels,  hand  at  his  forehead, 
and  always  with  that  radiant  smile  flashing 
from  his  gentle  eyes  and  his  beautiful  teeth. 
The  Irishman  always  slept  late.  One  morning 
he  was  awakened  by  an  insistent  little  voice  out- 
side his  mosquito-net,  saying,  over  and  over : 

"  Hello,  George;  wake  up  I  Hello,  George; 
wake  upl  "  Somebody  had  taught  him  that; 
but  he  saw  straightway  that  it  was  not  re- 
spectful, and  we  could  never  get  him  to  do 
it  again. 

After  his  second  bath  he  went  around  pull- 
ing his  shirt  open  to  show  how  clean  his  yellow 
little  body  was.  Indeed,  he  got  such  a  passion 
for  cleanliness  that  one  morning  he  naively  held 
out  his  exquisite  hands  to  Lewis  to  be  mani- 
cured— Lewis  did  it.  Again,  when  Tansan 
spouted  into  his  face,  he  reached  out,  pulled 
a  silk  handkerchief  from  a  man's  pocket  and 
mopped  his  face.  All  of  us  got  to  love  that 
boy,  and  when  we  went  away  there  was  a  con- 
sultation.   We  would  make  up  a  fund  and  edu- 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     151 

cate  him.  His  father  was  called  in  and  an  in- 
terpreter explained  our  design.  Wong  burst 
into  tears  and  wept  bitterly.  There  were  an- 
swering drops  in  the  Irishman's  eyes. 

"  I  tell  you,  all  the  blood  shed  in  this  mis- 
erable war  is  not  worth  those  few  precious 
tears.  Greatest  people  on  earth  I  Why  should 
he  want  to  leave  them*?" 

Lovable  little  Wong  I  The  first  word  the 
Irishman  said  when  he  came  back  through  that 
town  on  our  way  home  was  spoken  to  a  group 
of  boys  on  the  street. 

"  Wong !  "  he  said  simply,  and  they  raised 
a  shout  of  comprehension  and  dashed  away, 
the  Irishman  after  them.  Half  an  hour  later 
he  joined  me  in  a  restaurant.  Wong  was  not 
in  town,  he  said  gravely ;  he  had  bought  a  place 
outside  of  town  with  the  money  we  had  given 
him,  and  had  taken  his  family  into  the  country 
for  the  hot  season.  Anyhow,  we  saw  Wong 
the  gentle,  Wong  the  winning,  no  more. 

A  major  came  this  morning  to  give  us  a  lect- 
ure on  the  battle  of  Tehlitzu — to  while  away 
the  tedium,  said  one  of  the  Guardsmen.    The 


152       FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

Major  is  smooth-shaven  and  very  broad  be- 
tween the  cheek-bones.  His  hair  is  clipped 
short,  his  eyes  are  large,  and  his  face  is  strong. 
He  must  have  been  a  professor  in  a  war-college, 
for  he  stood  up  and  drew  mountains,  hills,  val- 
leys, positions,  trenches,  trees,  and  made  figures 
— all  with  wonderful  rapidity  and  skill — back- 
ward. That  is,  he  made  them  for  us  standing 
in  front  of  him  to  look  at.  A  certain  division, 
he  said,  of  a  certain  regiment,  at  a  certain  time 
had  done  a  certain  thing.  It  was  a  perfect 
lecture  except  that  all  the  really  essential  facts 
were  skilfully  suppressed. 

The  Major  had  been  present  only  as  an  ob- 
server— a  student — but  at  one  hot  place  on 
which  he  put  his  finger,  he  had  "  lost  many 
friends  there,"  he  said  impassively. 

At  that  place  a  young  Russian  officer  led  a 
charge,  and  his  men  refused  to  follow  him. 
The  officer  drew  a  dagger  and  smilingly  killed 
himself. 

"  We  all  speak  much  of  that  man,"  said  the 
Major. 

At  another  place  the  ammunition  gave  out 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     153 

on  both  sides,  and  Japanese  and  Russians 
fought  with  stones — ^men  on  both  sides  being 
severely  wounded.  While  this  was  going  on 
some  Russian  officers  advanced,  sword  in  hand, 
from  another  point,  but  they  had  no  followers. 
One  of  them  started  forward  and  gave  chal- 
lenge. A  Japanese  officer  sprang  to  meet  him, 
and  a  duel  was  fought  while  soldiers  of  both 
armies  looked  on.  "  The  Japanese  was  fortu- 
nate enough  to  despatch  the  Russian,"  said  the 
Major  modestly  and  dispassionately,  "  and  we 
buried  him  with  much  ceremony  and  put  a  bar- 
rier over  him.  It  was  an  interesting  study — 
this  battle — as  to  whether  it  is  better  to  fight  a 
defensive  or  an  offensive  enemy." 

"Well,  I'd  rather  have  seen  that  rock- 
fight,"  said  a  correspondent,  "  and  that  duel 
than  the  whole  battle." 

The  Major  looked  puzzled  and  shocked,  and 
went  on  to  tell  how  they  had  captured  a  fat 
Russian  colonel — whose  horse  was  wounded 
and  whose  coat  was  gone. 

"  He  said  our  artillery  fire  was — "  the  Ma- 
jor paused,  used  a  Russian  word,  and  turned 


154       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

to  the  interpreter  helplessly — and  the  inter- 
preter said: 

"  Ungodly." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  Major,  and  he  smiled. 
"  The  first  thing  the  Russian  asked  for  was  a 
bottle  of  soda-water,  which  made  us  laugh. 
We  do  not  carry  such  things  in  the  fields.  I 
gave  him  ten  cigarettes." 

"  How  many  men  did  the  Japanese  have  in 
that  fight  ^  "  asked  a  correspondent. 

"  Just  as  many  as  they  have  now,"  was  the 
illuminating  answer. 

I  wonder  if  anybody  but  the  Japanese  knows 
how  many  men  they  have  really  had  in  any 
fight,  and  whether  in  consequence  their  vic- 
tories have  been  due  to  astonishing  skill  or  over- 
whelming numbers.  There  is  rumor  of  one  lost 
Japanese  division,  the  whereabouts  of  which 
nobody — but  the  Japanese — knows.  It  could 
have  been  in  every  fight  thus  far  and  nobody 
— ^but  the  Japanese — could  know. 

We  are  getting  mighty  tired  now.  Several 
of  us  concluded  up  at  the  monastery  to-day 
that  we  would  go  home  pretty  soon  unless  there 


WHITE    SLAVES    OF    HAICHENG     155 

was  a  change.  There  we  took  pictures  of  tem- 
ples, monoliths,  stone-turtles.  The  Irishman 
appeared  suddenly — coming  down  the  long 
steps  above  us,  leading  a  Chinese  child  by  the 
hand  and  carrying  a  younger  one  in  his  arms. 
How  or  where  he  gathers  in  children  the  way 
he  does,  is  a  mystery  to  all  of  us.  Then  we 
took  more  pictures  and  four  officers  came  in. 
We  communicated  in  a  Babel  of  French,  Ger- 
man, English,  Chinese,  and  Japanese.  They 
got  tea  for  us  from  the  priest,  and  were  very 
polite.  Later  two  more  came  in.  Davis  and 
I  were  writing,  and  they  stood  around  and 
looked  at  us  for  a  while.     One  approached. 

"  What  are  you  doing  there?  " 

"  Writing,"  I  said. 

"  Drawing?  "  he  asked  suspiciously. 

"  Yes,  drawing,"  said  Davis.  "  Why  do 
you  want  to  know  what  we  are  doing?  "  I 
don't  think  the  officer  understood — but  he  un- 
derstood that  something  was  wrong,  and  he 
stood  a  moment  in  some  awkwardness. 

"  Good-a-by  I  "  he  said. 

"  Sayonara,"  we  answered. 


156        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

"  I  don't  think  it  is  anything  but  curiosity," 
I  said. 

"  A  good  deal  of  it  is — because  they  don't 
know  that  they  oughtn't  to  show  it.  He  put 
us  at  once  in  the  attitude  of  being  spies.  I 
can't  imagine  what  he  thought  we  were  draw- 
ing." 

"  We  didn't  have  our  badges  on.  He  might 
have  arrested  us." 

"  That  would  have  been  some  diversion." 

The  day  has  been  warm,  brilliant — the  sky 
crystalline,  deep,  and  flecked  with  streamers  of 
wool.  At  sunset  now  the  rain  is  sweeping  the 
west  like  a  giant  broom,  the  rush  of  wind  and 
river  is  indistinguishable,  the  silent  magpies  are 
flying  about,  but  there  is  still  a  mighty  peace 
within  these  walls.  Back  now  to  mud,  flies, 
and  fleas. 

It's  1  A.  M.  The  fleas  won't  sleep,  and  for 
that  reason  I  can't.  Even  the  drone  of  school- 
children chanting  Chinese  classics — as  our  little 
mountaineers  chant  the  alphabet  in  a  "  blab- 
school  " — and  the  barking  of  dogs  have  ceased. 
Somewhere  out  in  the  darkness  picket-fires  are 


WHITE    SLAVES   OF   HAICHENG     157 

shining  where  the  Sun-children  and  the  White 
Cubs  are  soon  to  lock  in  a  fierce  embrace.  I 
like  this  Manchurian  land  and  I  like  the  China- 
man. Both  are  human  and  the  country  is 
homelike — with  its  cornfields,  horses,  mules, 
cattle,  and  sheep  and  dogs.  The  striking  dif- 
ference is  here,  you  see  no  women  except  very 
old  ones  or  little  girls.  Here  is  the  absence 
of  that  insistent  plague — human  manure — 
that  disgusts  the  sensitive  nose  in  Japan. 
The  "  fragrant  summer-time  "  would  have  been 
a  satire  if  it  had  been  written  in  Japan. 
But  there  is  no  charm  here  as  there  is  every- 
where in  Nature  and  Man  in  Japan.  Besides 
the  Chinese,  here  at  least,  are  filthy  in 
person  and  in  their  homes — the  smell  of  the 
Chinaman  is  positively  acrid — while  the  Jap- 
anese are  beyond  doubt  the  very  cleanliest  peo- 
ple in  the  world.  I  wish  I  could  see  for  myself 
what  they  really  are  in  battle.  As  far  as  I  can 
make  out  at  long  distance,  the  Japanese  army 
and  the  individual  Japanese  soldier  seem  the 
best  in  the  world:  the  soldier  for  the  reason 
that  he  cares  no  more  for  death  than  the  aver- 


158       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

age  Occidental  for  an  afternoon  nap — the  army 
for  the  reason  that  the  Buschido  spirit — feudal 
fealty — having  been  transferred  from  Daimio 
and  Samurai  to  Colonel  and  General — gives  it 
a  discipline  that  seems  perfect.  Imagine  an 
army  without  stragglers  or  camp-followers,  in 
which  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  and  all 
boast  of  but  one  thing — a  willingness  to  die. 
It  looks  as  though  for  the  first  time  in  history 
the  fanatical  spirit  of  the  Mussulman  who  be- 
lieved that  he  would  step,  at  death,  from  the 
battle-field  into  Paradise,  was  directed  by  an 
acute  and  world-trained  intelligence.  As  to 
the  soldier,  the  pivotal  point  of  effectiveness 
seems  to  be  this :  an  Occidental  and  a  Japanese 
quarrel,  and  they  step  outside  to  settle  matters. 
The  Occidental  thinks  not  only  of  killing  the 
Japanese,  but  of  getting  out  alive.  His  ener- 
gies are  divided,  his  concentration  of  purpose 
suffers.  The  Japanese  has  no  such  division — 
he  is  concerned  only  with  killing  his  opponent, 
and  he  doesn't  seem  to  care  whether  or  not  he 
comes  out  alive  or  dead.  I'm  wondering, 
though,  whether  he  would  fight  this  way  for 


WHITE    SLAVES   OF   HAICHENG     159 

England — whether  he  will  ever  fight  again  this 
way  for  himself. 

It  has  been  cold  the  last  two  days.  The  flies 
have  almost  disappeared  and  the  fleas  are  less 
active — in  numbers,  anyhow.  Two  officers 
came  to  see  us  last  night  and  it's  the  first  time 
we  have  been  honored  in  this  way.  One  had 
a  long  sword  400  years  old — the  other  a  short 
one  500  years  old,  and  both  were  wonderful 
blades.  Now,  the  sword  of  a  Samurai  was  his 
soul,  and  the  man  who  even  stepped  over  it 
did  it  at  the  peril  of  his  life.  I  was  rather  sur- 
prised that  they  let  us  handle  them  so  freely. 

"  We  are  to  leave  here  very  soon,"  they  said. 

To-morrow  we  do  leave — toward  Liao-Yang. 


VII 

THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL    OF    THE 
SAXON 

Out  at  the  gate  of  the  compound,  last  night, 
a  barytone  voice  lifted  a  psean  of  praise  to  the 
very  stars.  We  were  to  leave  that  wretched 
enclosure  next  day,  the  Three  Guardsmen  said, 
and  that  night  the  White  Slaves  listened  to 
the  barking  of  dogs,  the  droning  chorus  of 
school-children  chanting  Chinese  classics  and 
the  medley  of  small  noises  in  streets  and  com- 
pound, and  sank  to  sleep  for  the  last  time  in 
Haicheng.  As  usual,  the  raucous  cries  of  Dean 
Prior  and  Burleigh  ushered  in  the  dawn,  and 
the  usual  awakening  and  bustle  of  servants  and 
masters  followed.  For  the  last  time  Little 
Wong,  Cup-bearer  and  Page-in-Waiting,  with 
his  hand  at  his  forehead,  clicked  his  heels  be- 
fore each  of  us  in  turn,  stirred  his  master,  the 
Irishman,  from  slumber  deep,  and,  with  a  radi- 
ant smile  and  flashing  teeth,  fired  volleys  of 

160 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  161 

Tansan  right  and  left.  Within  half  an  hour 
we  were  gathered  under  Yokoyama's  tent  for 
our  last  breakfast.  For  the  last  time  Big  Reg- 
gie, the  Frenchman,  marched  past  us,  and  for 
the  last  time  we  made  him  keep  step  to  a  ring- 
ing Marseillaise.  Half  an  hour  later,  the  com- 
pound was  full  of  squealing  horses,  and  soon 
carts,  coolies,  the  White  Slaves  of  Haicheng, 
and  the  Three  Guardsmen  wound  out  of  the 
gate,  through  the  narrow  streets  and  under  the 
city  wall — on  the  way  to  see  a  battle  at  last. 
Two  hours  we  marched,  climbed  then  a  little 
hill,  left  our  horses  on  the  hither  side,  crawled 
over  the  top  to  where  that  battle  was  raging — 
some  ten  miles  away.  Up  in  the  mountains 
somebody  was  evidently  letting  loose  giant 
puffs  of  cigarette-smoke  high  in  the  air.  No 
sound  was  perceptible,  but  they  were  shells,  a 
Guardsman  said. 

"Whose  shells?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  Guardsman.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  those  shells  were  so  far  away 
that  we  could  not  tell  whether  they  were  Rus- 
sian or  Japanese,  whether  they  were  coming 


162        FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

toward  us  or  going  away.  But  we  could  count 
them,  and,  of  course,  that  was  great  profit  and 
fun.  So,  while  that  battle  raged,  we  fearlessly 
strolled  around  the  hill-side  or  sat  in  groups 
and  told  stories,  and  one  daredevil  of  a  corre- 
spondent, made  reckless  by  the  perils  we  had 
passed,  deliberately  turned  his  back  to  the  fight 
and  calmly  read  a  newspaper. 

The  Three  Guardsmen  were  justly  pained  by 
such  a  neglect  of  such  an  opportunity  to  study 
strategy  and  tactics  in  a  great  war,  and  they 
did  not  look  happy.  Thus  for  two  hours  did 
we  not  see  the  battle  of  Anshantien. 

Toward  noon  the  shell-smoke  waned  and  we 
moved  on  to  another  compound,  where  we  were 
to  spend  the  night.  At  dusk  a  Guardsman 
came  in  radiant  and  filled  our  hearts  with 
fatuous  cheer.  We  were  to  see  another  fierce 
engagement  next  morning.  But  we  must  rise 
early  and  travel  fast  or  we  should  be  too  late, 
as  the  attack  would  be  made  before  dawn.  The 
Three  Guardsmen  would  come  themselves  to 
awaken  us  at  three  o'clock  so  that  there  could 
be  no  mistake.    He  was  so  earnest  and  so  sure 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  163 

that  we  went  to  bed  greatly  excited,  and  no- 
body slept  except  the  Irishman,  who  lifted  his 
head  from  sound  slumber,  however,  when  one 
vagrant  beer-bottle  was  popped  to  decide  a 
wager,  at  midnight. 

"  Don't  you  think  I  don't  hear  you,"  he 
said. 

"  I  win  the  bet,"  said  Brill. 

Three  hours  later,  the  Guardsmen  found  us 
awake.  We  arose  and  stumbled  in  the  mud 
and  darkness  for  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  started 
single  file  through  raining  blackness  toward 
that  ever-vanishing  front.  Nobody  said  a 
word,  and  the  silence  and  mystery  of  the  march 
was  oppressive  as  we  waded  streams  and 
ploughed  through  mud  between  walls  of  drip- 
ping com.  Every  now  and  then  the  Author- 
ity on  International  Law,  who  led  us,  would 
halt  the  column  and  get  off  his  horse  to  look 
for  the  trail  that  had  been  left  for  us  the  day 
before.  At  least  he  did  the  looking,  but  it  was 
always  Captain  James,  the  Englishman,  who 
found  the  trail;  a  more  stealing,  mysterious, 
conspirator-like  expedition  I  have  never  known. 


164        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

It  was  hard  to  believe  that  we  were  not 
creeping  up  to  make  an  attack  on  something 
ourselves,  or  that  the  Russians  might  not 
burst  from  the  corn  on  either  side  at  any- 
minute. 

On  we  went  until  another  hill  loomed  be- 
fore us,  and  at  the  foot  of  this  hill  we  waited 
for  the  dawn.  By  and  by  another  cavalcade 
approached,  the  military  attaches,  equally  im- 
pressive, equally  mysterious,  equally  solemn 
and  expectant.  And  on  that  little  hill  we 
waited,  in  the  cold  wind  and  drifting  sleet  and 
rain,  the  correspondents  huddled  on  top,  the 
cloaked  attaches  stalking  along  on  a  little  ter- 
race some  thirty  feet  below,  everybody  strain- 
ing his  eyes  through  the  darkness  to  see  the  first 
flash  of  a  gun.  Morning  came  and  we  were 
still  straining — big  Reggie  nibbling  a  hard- 
boiled  egg  on  the  very  summit  of  the  hill,  a 
Lieutenant-General  of  the  English  Army  pa- 
trolling the  terrace  like  some  "  knight-at-arms 
alone  and  palely  loitering,"  because  no  shells 
sang,  and  the  rest  of  us  dotting  the  muddy 
mound  with  miserable,  shivering  shapes,  while 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  165 

wind,  rain,  and  cold  made  merry  over  the  plight 
of  all.  The  Three  Guardsmen  moved  rest- 
lessly about,  speaking  words  of  good  cheer;  but 
something  was  happening  to  that  battle  and  we 
got  tired  of  straining  and  began  to  walk  reck- 
lessly around  that  hill  and  borrow  chocolate 
and  tobacco  and  bread  from  one  another  for 
breakfast.  Even  the  Guardsmen  got  uneasy — 
hopeless — and  once  I  found  myself  on  the 
other  side  of  the  hill,  where  one  of  them  lay 
huddled  in  his  army  coat.  For  a  little  while 
we  talked  inter-continental  differences. 

"  We  do  not  understand,  we  Occidentals, 
why  the  Japanese  prefers  to  commit  hara-kiri 
rather  than  be  captured,  and  we  argue  this  way : 
If  I  allow  myself  to  be  captured,  I  may  be  ex- 
changed or  escape,  and  thus  have  a  chance  to 
fight  another  day ;  if  not,  my  enemy  has  to  take 
care  of  me  and  feed  me,  so  that  I  reduce  his 
force  and  resources  just  that  much.  If  I  kill 
myself  I  make  a  gap  in  my  own  ranks  that  I 
can't  fill  again.  If  I  accept  capture,  I  am  wor- 
rying and  exhausting  you  all  the  time.  The 
only  good  I  can  see  in  hara-kiri  is  the  effect 


166       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

that  it  might  have  on  the  fighting  capacity  of 
the  men  who  are  left.  Is  there  any  economic 
consideration  of  that  sort  under  the  Japanese 
idea?" 

The  Guardsman  shook  his  head.  "  No,"  he 
said,  "it  is  instinct  with  us;  but,"  he  added 
presently,  "  I  think  we  are  coming  around  to 
your  point  of  view,  and  I  think  we  will  come 
around  to  it  more  and  more.  You  see,  we  have 
transferred  the  Buschido  spirit  of  feudalism 
into  the  army.  The  loyalty  of  Samurai  to  Dai- 
mio  has  been  transferred  to  soldier  and  officer, 
and  this  instinct  for  hara-kiri  is  so  great  an 
element  in  the  Buschido  spirit  that  I  think  our 
officers  are  a  little  fearful  about  trying  to 
change  it  too  rapidly."  But  a  Japanese  will 
not  talk  long  about  such  matters  with  a  for- 
eigner. 

The  Guardsman  pulled  a  little  brass  check 
covered  with  Chinese  characters  from  his 
pocket. 

"  This  is  how  we  identify  our  dead,"  he  said. 
"  Every  soldier  carries  one  of  these,  and  every 
officer." 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  167 

"  That's  a  good  idea,"  I  said,  but  I  couldn't 
help  thinking  how  little  use  he  could  ever  have 
for  that  check  as  long  as  he  was  guarding  us. 
It  is  said  that  just  about  this  time  the  wife  of 
a  correspondent  back  in  Tokio  went  trembling 
to  the  War-OfRce.  "  I  have  heard  nothing 
from  my  husband,"  she  said.  "  Tell  me  if  he 
has  been  killed."    The  official  was  startled. 

"  Impossible  I"  he  said. 

I  climbed  the  hill  again  to  see  how  that  bat- 
tle was  going  on.  The  first  line  of  "  The  Bur- 
ial of  Sir  John  Moore  "  will  do  for  that  battle. 
It  wasn't  going  on,  so  one  of  the  Guardsmen 
galloped  ahead  to  learn  what  the  trouble  was 
with  the  Schedule,  and  for  two  long,  chilly- 
hours  we  huddled  on  that  windy  mole-hill,  with 
no  flash  of  gun  in  the  distance,  no  puff  of  smoke 
high  in  the  air.  The  Guardsman  came  back 
then.  Kuropatkin  had  quietly  sneaked  away 
while  we  were  sneaking  for  that  hill,  and  the 
Japanese  were  after  him.  Thus  passed  the  sec- 
ond day  of  the  battle  of  Anshantien. 

At  noon  we  were  hitting  the  muddy  trail 
again  for  another  Chinese  compound.     Evi- 


168        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

dently  we  were  getting  nearer  the  front;  the 
flies  and  fleas  were  thicker  here,  a  dead  pig  pro- 
truded from  a  puddle  of  water  in  the  centre 
of  the  compound,  and  there  were  odors  about 
of  man  and  horse,  that  suggested  a  recent  oc- 
cupation by  troops.  We  policed  the  filthy  en- 
closure that  afternoon,  and  quite  late  the  thun- 
der of  big  guns  began  far  away,  while  a  yellow 
flame  darted  from  the  unseen  sun,  spread  two 
mighty  saffron  wings  through  the  heavens, 
fitted  them  together  from  earth  and  sky,  and 
left  them  poised  motionless,  while  from  them 
stole  slowly  out  the  rich  green-and-gold  radi- 
ance that  comes  only  after  rain — drenching  wet 
earth  and  still  trees  and  quiet  seas  of  corn.  By 
and  by  crickets  chirped,  quiet  stars  shone  out 
above  the  yellow,  and  the  dusk  came  with  a 
great  calm — but  it  was  the  calm  that  presaged 
the  storm  of  Liao-Yang. 

We  had  a  serious  consultation  that  night. 
The  artists  couldn't  very  well  draw  what  they 
couldn't  see.  Some  of  us,  not  being  military 
experts,  and  therefore  dependent  on  mental  pict- 
ures and  incident  for   material,  were    equally 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  169 

helpless.  Thus  far  the  spoils  of  war  had  been 
battle-fields,  empty  trenches,  a  few  wounded 
Japanese  soldiers,  and  one  Russian  prisoner 
in  a  red  shirt.  So,  hearing  that  General  Oku 
feared  for  our  safety,  we  sent  him  a  round- 
robin  relieving  him  of  any  responsibility  on 
our  account,  and  praying  that  we  should  be 
allowed  to  go  closer  to  the  fighting,  or  our 
occupation  would  be  gone.  Then  we  went  to 
sleep. 

The  straw  that  broke  the  camel's  back  was 
added  to  the  burden  of  the  beast  next  morning. 
The  final  word  came  from  General  Oku, 
through  a  Guardsman,  that  the  Russians  were 
in  flight,  that  there  would  probably  be  no  de- 
cisive battle  for  some  time  and  that  if  there 
should  be,  we  were  to  be  allowed  no  closer 
than  four  miles  from  the  firing-line.  Well, 
you  cannot  see,  that  far  away,  how  men 
behave  when  they  fight,  are  wounded,  and 
die — and  as  all  battles  look  alike  at  a  long 
distance,  there  was  nothing  for  some  of  us  to 
do  but  go  home.  So,  on  a  bright  sunny  morn- 
ing,  Richard  Harding  Davis,   Melton  Prior, 


170       FOLLOWING   THE   SUN-FLAG 

the  wild  Irishman,  and  I  sat  alone  in  the  last 
dirty  compound,  with  the  opening  guns  of  Liao- 
Yang  booming  in  the  distance.  I  had  sold 
Fuji  to  Guy  Scull,  and  I  wondered  at  the  nerve 
of  the  man,  for  the  price,  though  small,  was 
big  for  Fuji.  I  pulled  that  vicious  stallion's 
wayward  forelock  with  malicious  affection  sev- 
eral times,  and  watched  Scull  curvet  out  on 
him  to  a  more  dangerous  fate  than  any  danger 
that  war  could  hang  over  him.  Away  we  went, 
then,  Davis,  Prior,  and  the  Irishman  on  horse- 
back— what  became  of  his  bicycle,  I  don't 
know  to  this  day — on  the  backward  trail  of  the 
war-dragon — for  home.  We  went  back 
through  Haicheng,  and  spent  a  few  hours  in 
the  same  deserted  compound  that  we  had  left 
only  a  few  days  before.  Its  silence  was  elo- 
quent of  the  clash  and  clatter  and  storm  of  our 
ten  days'  imprisonment  there.  There  we  went 
to  see  General  Fukushima,  who  with  great 
alacrity  gave  us  a  pass  back  to  Japan.  He 
could  not  understand  why  all  of  us  would  have 
preferred  to  be  at  Port  Arthur.  It  mystified 
him  a  good  deal. 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  171 

"  General,"  said  Dean  Prior,  "  you  promised 
me  that  I  should  go  to  Port  Arthur."  The 
General  laughed. 

"  I  tried  to  get  you  to  stay  for  the  third 
column,"  he  said,  and  Prior  was  silent,  whether 
from  conviction  or  disgust,  I  don't  know. 

He  wanted  us  to  take  a  roundabout  way  to 
Newchwang,  so  that  we  would  be  always  un- 
der Japanese  protection.  There  were  Chinese 
bandits,  he  said,  along  the  short  cut  that  we 
wanted  to  take,  and  there  had  been  many  mur- 
ders and  robberies  along  that  road.  Just  the 
same,  we  took  that  road.  So  away  we  went, 
with  carts,  coolies,  interpreters,  and  servants 
— they  in  the  road  and  I  stepping  the  ties  of 
the  Siberian  Railway.  One  hundred  yards 
ahead  I  saw  two  Japanese  soldiers  coming 
toward  me  on  the  track.  When  they  saw  me 
— they  mistook  me  for  a  Russian,  I  suppose — 
they  jumped  from  the  track  and  ran  back  along 
the  edge  of  a  cornfield — disappearing  every 
now  and  then.  I  was  a  little  nervous,  for  I 
thought  they  might  take  a  pot  shot  at  me  from 
a  covert  somewhere,  but  they  were  only  dashing 


172       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

back  to  announce  my  coming  to  a  squad  of  sol- 
diers, and  as  I  passed  them  on  the  track  the 
major  in  command  grinned  slightly  when  he 
answered  my  salute. 

We  had  a  terrible  pull  that  day  through 
the  mud,  and  we  reached  a  Chinese  village  at 
dusk.  The  Irishman,  with  the  subtle  divina- 
tion that  is  his  only,  found  by  instinct  the  best 
house  in  the  town  for  us  to  stay.  It  had  around 
it  a  garden  full  of  flowers,  clean  mats  and  an- 
tique chairs  within,  and  there  was  plenty  of 
good  cold  water  and  nice  fresh  eggs.  My  last 
memory  that  night,  as  I  lay  on  a  cot  under  a 
mosquito-net,  was  of  the  Irishman  and  our  aged 
host  promenading  up  and  down  the  garden- 
path.  The  Chinaman  had  never  heard  a  word 
of  English  before  in  his  life,  but  the  Irishman 
was  talking  to  him  with  perfect  gravity  and 
fluency  about  the  war  and  about  us,  giving  our 
histories,  what  we  had  done  and  what  we  had 
failed  to  do,  and  all  the  time  the  old  Chinaman 
was  bowing  with  equal  gravity,  and  smiling  as 
though  not  one  word  escaped  his  full  compre- 
hension.   How  the  Irishman  kept  it  up  for  so 


THE   BACKWARD   TRAI]  173 

long,  and  why  he  kept  it  up  for  so  long,  I  do 
not  know,  but  they  were  strolling  up  and  down 
when  I  went  to  sleep. 

The  next  day  we  had  another  long  pull 
through  deeper  mud.  For  hours  and  hours  we 
went  through  solid  walls  of  ten-foot  corn; 
sometimes  we  were  in  mud  and  water  above 
the  knees.  Once  we  got  lost — anybody  who 
followed  that  Irishman  always  got  lost — and 
an  old  Chinaman  led  him  and  Davis  and  me 
for  miles  through  marshy  cornfields.  Some- 
times we  would  meet  Chinamen  bringing  their 
wives  and  children  back  home — now  that  both 
armies  had  gone  on  ahead — the  women  in 
carts,  their  faces  always  averted,  and  the  chil- 
dren dangling  in  baskets  swung  to  either  end 
of  a  bamboo  pole,  and  carried  by  father  or 
brother  over  one  shoulder.  By  noon  the  kind 
old  Chinaman  connected  us  with  our  caravan- 
sary in  another  Chinese  town.  There  the  Irish- 
man got  eggs  by  laying  a  pebble  and  cackling 
like  a  hen,  and  the  entire  village  gathered 
around  us  to  watch  us  eat  our  lunch.  They 
were  all  children  from  octogenarian  down — 


174       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

simple,  kindly,  humorous,  and  with  a  spirit 
of  accommodation  and  regard  for  the  stranger 
that  I  have  never  seen  outside  of  our  Southern 
mountains.  After  lunch  we  took  photographs 
of  them,  and  of  ourselves  in  turn  with  them, 
and  the  village  policeman — he  did  not  carry 
even  a  stick — was  a  wag  and  actor,  and  made 
beautiful  poses  while  the  village  laughed  in 
toto.  This  would  not  have  been  possible  in  a 
Japanese  town.  Nearly  all  of  them  followed 
us  out  of  the  village,  and  they  seemed  sorry 
to  have  us  go. 

Soon  I  tried  a  Chinese  cart  for  a  while,  and 
in  spite  of  its  jolting  I  almost  went  to  sleep. 
As  I  drowsed  I  heard  a  voice  say : 

"  You'd  better  tell  him  to  keep  awake."  An- 
other voice  answered: 

"  I  will  take  care  of  him,"  and  I  lifted  my 
hat,  to  see  the  ever-faithful  Takeuchi  stalking 
along  through  the  deep  mud  by  me,  with  a  big 
stick  in  his  hand.  But  we  saw  no  bandits.  It 
was  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  now,  and  we 
began  to  meet  column  after  column  of  Japan- 
ese troops  moving  toward  the  front  from  the 


THE   BACKWARD   TRAIL  175 

new  point  of  disembarkation — ^Newchwang. 
Somehow,  on  the  wind,  a  rumor  was  borne  to 
us  that  there  was  a  foreign  hotel  in  Newchwang 
which  had  bath-tubs  and  beer  and  tansan ;  even 
a  wilder  rumor  came  that  the  Russians  had 
left  champagne  there.  We  held  a  consulta- 
tion. If  all  those  things  were  there,  it  were 
just  as  well  that  some  one  of  us  should  engage 
them  for  the  four  as  quickly  as  possible.  The 
happy  lot  fell  to  me,  and  I  mounted  Dean 
Prior's  great  white  horse  and  went  ahead  at 
a  gallop.  That  horse  was  all  right  loping  in 
a  straight  line,  but  if  there  was  a  curve  to  be 
turned  or  a  slippery  bank  to  descend,  his  weak 
back  drew  mortality  for  the  rider  very  near. 
Then  he  had  an  ungovernable  passion  for  lying 
down  in  mud-holes  and  streams,  which  held 
distinct  possibilities  for  discomfort.  Twice  he 
went  down  with  me  on  the  road,  though  he 
walked  over  a  stream  on  a  stone  arch  that  was 
not  two  feet  wide  in  perfect  safety.  In  one 
river,  too,  he  went  down,  and  we  rolled  to- 
gether for  a  little  while  in  the  yellow  mud  and 
water;  but  I  ploughed  a  way  through  columns 


176       FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

of  troops,  and,  led  by  a  Chinese  guide,  reached 
Newchwang  at  sunset.  I  went  to  the  Japanese 
headquarters,  but  could  learn  nothing  about 
that  hotel.  I  asked  directions  of  everybody, 
and  when,  going  down  the  street,  I  saw  coming 
toward  me  through  the  dust  a  boy  with  a  tennis- 
racquet  over  his  shoulder  and  a  real  white  girl 
in  a  white  dress,  with  black  hair  hanging  down 
her  back,  I  asked  directions  again,  merely  that 
I  might  look  a  little  longer  upon  that  girl's 
face.  It  seemed  a  thousand  years  since  I  had 
seen  a  woman  who  looked  like  her.  I  found 
the  hotel,  and  I  got  rooms  for  ourselves  and 
quarters  for  our  servants  and  horses.  Looking 
for  a  stable  in  the  dark,  I  turned  a  corner,  to 
see  a  Japanese  naked  bayonet  thrust  within 
a  foot  of  my  breast.  Naturally,  I  stopped,  but 
as  it  came  no  nearer,  I  went  on,  and  not  a  word 
was  said  by  the  sentinel  nor  by  me.  None  of 
my  companions  came  in,  and  I  ate  dinner  in 
lonely  magnificence,  put  beer,  champagne,  and 
tansan  on  ice,  gave  orders  that  the  servants 
should  wait  until  midnight,  and  sent  guides 
out  to  wait  for  Davis  and  Prior  and  the  Irish- 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  177 

man  at  the  city  gates.  Then  I  went  to  bed. 
About  two  o'clock  there  was  a  pounding  on  my 
door,  and  a  little  Japanese  ofRcer  with  a  two- 
handed  sword  some  five  feet  long  came  in  and 
arrested  me  as  a  Russian  spy.  He  said  I  would 
have  to  leave  Newchwang  by  the  earliest  train 
the  next  morning.  Now,  if  I  had  had  wings 
I  should  have  been  cleaving  the  Manchurian 
darkness  at  that  very  minute  for  home,  and 
with  a  little  more  self-control  I  should  have 
hung  out  the  window  and  laughed  when  he 
made  that  direful  threat.  But  I  had  ridden 
into  that  town  on  the  biggest  white  horse  I 
ever  saw,  and  I  looked  like  an  English  field- 
marshal  without  his  blouse.  I  had  gone  to  the 
Japanese  headquarters.  I  had  registered  my 
name  and  the  names  of  my  three  friends  on  the 
hotel-book.  I  had  filled  out  the  blank  that  is 
usual  for  the  passing  stranger  in  time  of  war. 
I  had  added  information  that  was  not  asked 
for  on  that  blank.  I  had  engaged  four  rooms, 
had  ordered  dinner  for  four  people,  and  had 
things  to  eat  and  things  to  drink  awaiting  for 
the  other  three  whenever  they  should  come.     I 


178        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

had  my  war-pass  in  my  pocket,  which  I  dis- 
played, and  yet  this  Japanese  officer,  the  second 
in  command  at  Newchwang  and  a  graduate  of 
Yale,  as  I  learned  afterward,  woke  me  up  at 
two  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  in  excellent 
English  put  me  under  arrest  as  a  Russian  spy. 
I  was  robed  only  in  a  blue  flannel  shirt  and  a 
pair  of  "  Bonnie  Maginns,"  but  I  sprang  shame- 
lessly from  out  that  mosquito-netting,  and  I 
said  things  that  I  am  not  yet  sorry  for.  Over 
that  scene  I  will  draw  the  curtain  quickly — but 
just  the  same,  a  Japanese  soldier  sat  at  my  door 
all  through  the  night.  The  next  morning  I 
heard  a  great  noise,  and  I  saw  our  entire  train 
in  the  street  below.  I  called  my  sentinel  to 
the  window  and  pointed  out  to  him  four  carts, 
twelve  horses  and  mules,  eight  coolies,  and 
eight  interpreters  and  servants,  and  I  asked 
him  if  Russian  spies  were  accustomed  to  travel 
that  way — if  they  did  business  with  a  circus 
procession  and  a  brass  band'?  He  grinned 
slightly. 

Half  an  hour  later  Davis  and  I  went  down 
to  see  the  Yale  graduate,  and  he  apologized. 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  179 

He  said  graciously  that  he  would  remove  the 
guard  from  my  door,  and  I  did  not  tell  him 
that  that  intelligent  soldier  had  voluntarily  re- 
moved himself  an  hour  before.  We  told  him 
we  were  very  anxious  to  get  back  to  Yoko- 
hama to  catch  a  steamer  for  home.  He  said 
that  we  probably  would  not  be  allowed  to  go 
home  on  a  transport,  and  that  even  if  we  had 
permission  we  could  not,  for  the  reason  that 
no  transports  were  going. 

"There  is  none  going  to-day?" 

"  No." 

"  Nor  to-morrow?  " 

*'  No." 

"Nor  the  day  after?" 

"  No." 

We  said  good-by.  Just  outside  the  door  we 
met  another  Japanese  officer  who  had  been  sent 
into  Manchuria  with  a  special  message  from 
the  Emperor,  and  had  been  told  incidentally 
to  look  in  on  the  correspondents.  He  had 
looked  in  on  us  above  Haicheng,  and  he  was 
apparently  trying  to  do  all  he  could  for  us. 
He  was  quite  sure  if  we  saw  the  Major  in 


180       FOLLOWING   THE    SUN-FLAG 

Command  there,  that  we  should  be  allowed  to 
go.  "Is  there  a  transport  going  to-day?"  I 
asked. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  am  taking  it  myself." 
I  kept  my  face  grave. 

"  And  to-morrow"?  " 

"  Yes." 

"And  the  next  day?" 

"  Yes." 

Three  of  them — all  useless — nailed  within 
five  minutes  from  the  lips  of  a  brother-officer 
and  within  ten  steps  of  the  Yale  graduate's 
door  I    It  was  to  laugh. 

I  took  a  Chinese  sampan,  and  with  sail  and 
oar  beat  up  that  yellow  river  for  an  hour  to 
find  the  Major  in  Command.  When  I  got  to 
his  office,  he  had  gone  to  tiffin.  Where  did 
he  tiffin  ?  The  answer  was  a  shake  of  the  head. 
Nobody  could  disturb  the  gallant  major  while 
he  was  tiffining,  no  matter  how  urgent  the  call- 
er's business  was.  When  would  he  return? 
Within  one  hour  and  a  half.  Well,  we  would 
have  just  a  little  more  than  another  hour  in 
which  to  catch  that  transport,  even  if  we  got 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  181 

permission  to  take  it.  And  somehow  cooling 
heels  in  the  ante-chamber  of  the  Major  while 
he  tiffined  had  no  particular  charm  for  me  just 
then,  so  I  decided  very  quickly  to  start  back 
by  Chefoo  and  Shanghai,  even  if  it  did  take 
five  extra  days  and  perhaps  cause  us  to  lose 
the  steamer  for  home. 

So  we  gathered  our  things  together  and  took 
passage  on  a  British  steamer  for  China.  A  Chi- 
nese sampan  took  the  ever-faithful  Takeuchi 
and  me  with  our  luggage  to  the  ship.  I  handed 
Takeuchi  two  purple  fifty-sen  bills  that  the 
army  issues  in  Manchuria  as  scrip — to  give  to 
the  Chinaman — and  started  up  the  gangway 
toward  the  Captain's  cabin.  Takeuchi  thought 
I  had  gone,  but  I  looked  around  just  in  time 
to  see  him  thrust  one  of  the  bills  in  his  own 
pocket,  give  the  Chinaman  the  other,  put  his 
right  foot  against  the  Chinaman's  breast,  and 
joyously  kick  him  down  the  gangway  into  the 
sampan.     Selah  I 

The  joy  of  being  on  a  British  ship  with  the 
Union  Jack  over  you  and  no  Japanese  to  say 
you  nay  I     Never  shall  I  forget  that  England 


182       FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

liberated  the  slave.     She  freed  some  of  the 
White  Slaves  of  Haicheng. 

To  avoid  floating  mines  we  anchored  that 
night  outside  the  bar,  but  next  morning  we 
struck  the  wide,  free,  blue  seas,  with  an  English 
captain,  whose  tales  made  Gulliver's  Travels 
sound  like  the  story  of  a  Summer  in  a  Gar- 
den. Without  flies,  fleas,  mosquitoes,  or  scor- 
pions, we  slept  when  and  where  we  pleased  and 
as  long  as  we  pleased.  Once  more  we  wore  the 
white  man's  clothes  and  ate  his  food  and  drank 
his  drink,  and  were  happy.  In  the  afternoon 
we  passed  for  miles  through  the  scattered  car- 
goes of  Chinese  junks  that  had  been  destroyed 
by  the  Japanese  while  on  their  way  to  supply 
the  Russians  at  Port  Arthur,  and  that  night 
we  saw  the  flash  of  big  guns  as  once  more  we 
swept  near  the  fortress  we  had  hoped  to  see. 
A  sunny,  still  day  once  again  and  we  were  at 
Chefoo,  where  in  the  harbor  we  saw — glory  of 
glories! — an  American  Man-of-War.  Ashore 
Chefoo  was  distinctly  shorn  of  the  activities 
that  lately  had  made  the  town  hum.  There 
were  only  a  Russian  or  two  there  from  a  de- 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  183 

stroyed  torpedo-boat,  a  few  missionaries  in  rick- 
shaws and  dressed  like  Chinese,  a  few  queer- 
looking  foreign  women  in  the  streets,  and  a 
lonely,  smooth-shaven  young  man  from  Chi- 
cago, who  ran  a  roulette-wheel  and  took  in 
more  kinds  of  Oriental  currency  than  I  knew 
to  exist. 

"  I  am  sorry  the  Russians  have  gone,"  he 
said;  "  they  were  great  gamblers." 

There  we  learned  that  fighting  was  going  on 
at  Liao-Yang — real,  continuous  fighting;  and 
a  melancholy  of  which  no  man  spoke  set  in 
strong  with  all  of  us.  But  there  was  that 
American  Man-of-War  out  in  the  harbor,  and 
Davis  and  I  went  out  to  her  and  climbed 
aboard.  We  saw  nice,  clean  American  boys 
again,  and  pictures  of  their  sisters  and  sweet- 
hearts, and  we  had  dinner  and  wine,  and  we 
made  that  good  ship  shake  from  stem  to  stern 
with  song. 

Two  days  later  we  were  threading  a  way 
through  a  wilderness  of  ships  of  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth  into  Shanghai.  Shanghai — 
that  "  Paris  of  the  East  " — with  its  stone  build- 


184        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

ings  and  hotels  and  floating  flags;  its  beautiful 
Bund  bordered  with  trees  and  parks  and  paths, 
its  streets  thronged  with  a  medley  of  races  and 
full  of  modern  equipages,  rattling  cabs,  rattling 
rickshaws,  and  ancient  Chinese  wheelbarrows 
each  with  one  big  wooden  wheel,  pushed  by  a 
single  Chinaman  with  a  strap  over  his  shoulder, 
and  weighted,  sometimes,  with  six  Chinese  fac- 
tory-girls, their  tiny  feet  dangling  down — and 
all  this  confusion  handled  and  guarded  by 
giant,  red-turbaned  Sikh  policemen — each  bear- 
ing himself  with  the  dignity  of  a  god.  There 
was  gay  life  in  Shanghai — good  and  bad;  town 
clubs  and  country  clubs,  with  tennis,  cricket, 
and  golf.  There  were  beautiful  roads,  filled 
with  handsome  carriages  and  smart  men  and 
women  on  smart  horses,  and  there  were  road- 
houses  with  men  and  women  who  were  not  so 
smart  seated  around  little  tables  all  over  the 
verandas,  with  much  music  coming  from  with- 
in. Along  that  Bund  at  night  were  house-boats 
anchored,  on  the  decks  of  which  people  dined 
among  red  candles  to  the  music  of  a  brass  band 
in  a  park  near  by — brilliantly  lit.    And  there 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  185 

was  a  Chinese  quarter  not  far  away,  thronged 
with  strange  faces,  with  narrow,  twisting 
streets,  some  murky  and  some  gay  with  lan- 
terns that  hung  from  restaurants,  theatres,  opi- 
um dens,  singing  and  gambling  halls,  while 
through  those  streets  coolies  bore  high  on  their 
shoulders  gayly  dressed  Chinese  singing-girls 
from  one  hall  to  another. 

On  the  ship  for  Nagasaki  were  many  young 
Chinese  boys  and  girls  going  to  other  lands  to 
be  educated,  and  I  was  given  two  significant 
bits  of  information :  "  Ten  years  ago,"  said  a 
man,  "  a  foreign  education  was  a  complete  bar 
to  political  preferment  over  here.  Things  have 
so  changed  and  a  foreign  education  is  now  such 
an  advantage  that  rich  Chinamen  who  have 
political  aspirations  for  their  sons  purposely 
send  them  abroad  to  be  educated." 

"  On  this  ship,"  said  another,  "  and  the  two 
ships  that  follow  her,  many  hundred  young 
Chinamen  are  going  over  to  Japan  to  get  a 
military  training.  And  yet,  according  to  some 
observers,  there  is  nothing  doing  in  China — 
even  on  the  part  of  Japan." 


186        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

We  landed  at  Nagasaki  and  had  a  three 
nights'  ride  to  Yokohama  in  a  crowded  car  in 
which  it  was  possible  to  sleep  only  when  sitting 
upright.  On  the  third  day  the  long  train  came 
to  a  stop  at  daybreak  and  every  Japanese  soul 
in  it — man,  woman,  and  child — ^poured  out, 
each  with  a  towel,  scrubbed  vigorously  at  a 
water-trough  and  came  back,  each  sawing  on 
his  teeth  with  a  wooden  tooth-brush.  Such  a 
scene  could  be  paralleled  nowhere  else.  I  sup- 
pose the  Japanese  are  the  cleanliest  people  in 
the  world. 

Tokio  at  last — and  a  request  from  the  Jap- 
anese: Would  we  consider  going  back  to  Port 
Arthur*?    We  would  not. 

"  Please  consider  the  question."  We  con- 
sidered. 

"  Yes,"  we  said,  "  we  will  go." 

"  You  can't,"  said  the  Japanese. 

Right  gladly  then  we  struck  the  backward 
trail  of  the  Saxon.  The  Happy  Exile  went 
aboard  with  me,  and  so  did  Takeuchi,  who 
brought  his  pretty  young  wife  along  to  say, 
"  How  d'ye  do?  "  and  ''  Good-by."    Takeuchi 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  187 

brought  a  present,  too — a  little  gold  mask  of 
a  fox,  which  he  thought  most  humorously  fit- 
ting— a  scarf-pin  for  Inari-sama,  which  is  the 
honorific  deistical  form  of  my  honorable  name 
in  Japanese.  Later,  in  this  country,  I  got  Ta- 
keuchi's  photograph  and  this  card :  "  I  wish  you 
please  send  me  your  recommondation  which  is 
necessary  to  have  in  my  business."  He  shall 
have  it. 

All  my  life  Japan  had  been  one  of  the  two 
countries  on  earth  I  most  wanted  to  see.  No 
more  enthusiastic  pro-Japanese  ever  put  foot 
on  the  shore  of  that  little  island  than  I  was 
when  I  swung  into  Yokohama  Harbor  nearly 
seven  months  before.  I  had  lost  much — but  I 
was  carrying  away  in  heart  and  mind  the  name- 
less charm  of  the  land  and  of  the  people — for 
the  charm  of  neither  has  much  succumbed  to  the 
horrors  imported  from  us;  Fujiyama,  whose 
gray  head  lies  close  under  the  Hand  of  Benedic- 
tion; among  the  foot-hills  below  the  Maid  of 
Miyanoshita — may  Fuj  i  keep  her  ever  safe  from 
harm;  O-kin-san  the  kind,  who  helps  the  poor 
and  welcomes  the  stranger — her  little  home  at 


188        FOLLOWING    THE    SUN-FLAG 

the  head  of  the  House  of  the  Hundred  Steps 
I  could  see  from  the  deck  of  the  ship ;  the  great 
Daibutsu  at  Kamakura,  whose  majestic  calm 
stills  all  the  world  while  you  look  upon  his  face 
and — the  babies,  in  streets  and  doorways — the 
babies  that  rule  the  land  as  kings.  I  did  have, 
too,  for  a  memory.  Shin — ^my  rickshaw  man — 
but  Shin  failed  me  at  the  last  minute  on  the 
dock.  Yes,  even  at  that  last  minute  on  the 
dock.  Shin  tried  to  fool  me.  But  I  forgive  him. 
Of  this  war  in  detail  I  knew  no  more  than 
I  should  have  known  had  I  stayed  at  home — 
and  it  had  taken  me  seven  months  to  learn  that 
it  was  meant  that  I  should  not  know  more. 
There  can  be  no  quarrel  with  what  was  done — 
only  with  the  way  it  was  done — which  was  not 
pretty.  Somehow,  as  Japan  sank  closer  to  the 
horizon,  I  found  myself  wondering  whether  the 
Goddess  of  Truth  couldn't  travel  the  breadth 
of  that  land  incog. — even  if  she  played  the 
leading  part  in  a  melodrama  with  a  star  in  her 
forehead  and  her  own  name  emblazoned  in 
Japanese  ideographs  around  her  breast.  I 
think  so.    I  wondered,  too,  if  in  shedding  the 


THE    BACKWARD    TRAIL  189 

wrinkled  skin  of  Orientalism,  Japan  might  not 
have  found  it  even  better  than  winning  a  battle 
— to  shed  with  it  polite  duplicity  and  bring  in 
the  blunt  telling  of  the  truth;  for  if  the  arch 
on  which  a  civilization  rests  be  character,  the 
key-stone  of  that  arch,  I  suppose,  must  be  hon- 
esty— simple  honesty. 

Right  gladly  we  struck  the  backward  Trail 
of  the  Saxon. 


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